


The Unfamiliar Sensation of Settling

by mumblefox



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Communication Happens and Everything is Fine, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Lyrium Withdrawal, M/M, Multi, OT3, Other, Past Torture, Polyamory, Queerplatonic Relationships, Spoilers, ace!Cullen, all the not-so-snuggly but canon nastiness of Dorian and Cullen's pasts, but ultimately, even though we also deal with, happy everything, pretty much, seriously this is just a feel-good fluff-fest, snuggles, time for some healthy ace/poly ships motherfrickers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:49:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4508412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblefox/pseuds/mumblefox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story that explores the developing relationship between Cullen, Dorian, and the Inquisitor over the course of Inquisition, in which Cullen (who is asexual but totally a romantic) finds himself in love with two people at once. Instead of drama, communication happens and everything is good and cute and warm and lovely and healthy and happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unfamiliar Sensation of Settling

**Author's Note:**

> Canon-compliant as much as is possible with an OT3, complete with boundaries, mutual respect and admiration, and Dorian being gay and only gay seriously people it's a little weird that I feel that I have to specify that.

At Skyhold, nightfall always seems to settle in gently. The mountain air is cold during the day and gets colder as night wears on, and it chases everyone inside as the shadows stretch long across the courtyard, following the call of their friends and fires. Above and around them all, the guards patrol the walls in sombre silence, saving their energy for staying warm, waiting for the soft bells that mark the end of their shift. Every night, the entire keep bunkers down like an animal in its den and waits for daylight.

Cullen stands at his desk, staring down at the reports Josephine had delivered to him earlier. It is late, certainly, far later than is responsible. His days are long, and made longer by the dry, scraping, constant itch of lyrium withdrawal. Perhaps it would be easier if he were younger. Perhaps not. If he’d tried to quit when he left Ferelden, when the nightmares were still fresh…there hadn’t been much of him left to save, in those days. Death would have been easier than this.

He knows that across Skyhold there are other lights burning, but only a few matter to him: the first would be Dorian in his library, poring over the books the Inquisitor had secured for him from the Tevinter archives, searching for an answer to the question of who Corypheus had once been. The other is the Inquisitor herself, being bribed into doing paperwork with the sweets Josephine was often sent as gifts. Training that day had been hard on all of them, and their work is not done, is never done. He smiles to himself as he thinks of them, feeling both fondness and exasperation, wishing they would allow themselves to rest more often, knowing they would chide him for the same thing.

The sun had gone behind the mountains hours before, but he has not yet resolved the problem of how to transport heavy arms and armour up the mountain; so far, they had been receiving their equipment piecemeal, one breastplate or shield at a time strapped to the backs of the brontos along with food and their other necessities. Too much at once could cause the animals to lose their balance on the precarious slopes, and carts are, of course, out of the question. Dorian had suggested magic, but the trek is too long for even a group of mages to manage.

The thought of their resident Tevinter still makes his head spin. In Cullen’s nightmares, he is still nineteen, still the determined boy with constant frown lines who spent too much time pretending to be older than he was, who wanted to be the best Templar he could be, who worked the hardest, who was chained and dissected and peeled apart by the abominations at the Circle, who screamed until his voice gave out to drown the pain, who begged the Hero of Ferelden to murder every mage she found.

He’d carried that potent mixture of fear and hate for a long time. The person he had been then could not have accepted Dorian’s kindness, could not have sat across a table from him even to play a game. Tevinter and its ruling class of mages created a shadow that loomed very large. Even with his Templar abilities, he could not have been easy in Dorian’s company. He thinks of what they have built between them and wonders, fruitlessly, how many friendships his fear has denied him over the years.

He shuffles his papers into a new configuration with a sigh, eyes blurring. Maybe Dagna could design some little sleds that they could attach to the brontos. Perhaps he could convince the Inquisitor to tame a high dragon, which could fly their supplies up the mountain for them. Maker. She’d probably try it. This problem is the same one he’s been turning over for days. There has to be an answer, but he’s beginning to think he can’t find it.

His skin prickles. Dangerous, those thoughts. He knows that there, in those moments of doubt, is where the poison creeps in: he begins to think it is just the ache in his bones that distracts him, the buzzing in his head, the lack of sleep, and he could fix it, he could give in and the answer would be there, clear as day. All it would take is a single philter. Just enough to chase the pain away, just a sip. All it would take…

He feels the craving rising in him, unrelenting as the tide. Even though he recognizes it, he can’t stop himself from sliding down to meet it, a dizzying tilt as his aches turn to burning and his stomach churns as though it were hollow. He balls both hands into fists, puts them on his desk and leans until his knuckles are sharp with pain, two bright points to focus on in the foggy mire of withdrawal. The temptation comes and goes: he knows that. This would pass, as always. His pulse throbs in the biggest knuckles of both hands where the bruises are building.

“I can endure it,” he says aloud, a mantra he’s kept since he had first said it to the Inquisitor. “Andraste preserve me, I can endure it. Righteous are those…those who stand and do not falter. Righteous are those who stand. I can endure it.” He feels time passing in a dizzying spin like it had during his vigil, when he’d watched the stars wheel above his head, hours pressed into minutes. Eventually, the muscles in his forearms begin to shake with the strain of pressing down, and with a hesitant breath he steps back, assesses himself carefully, rubs the crick out of his neck. Even in the chill of the night mountain air, he is sweating. He shrugs out of his fur cloak and lays it on his desk, then unbuckles his breastplate with shaking fingers and lifts it off as well.

A needless habit, that. Wearing all his armour around Skyhold isn’t necessary with all the warning they would have of attacks, but he can’t quite bring himself to go without it. Haven had shaken him, more than he would ever allow himself to admit, more than he could ever say. He is the Commander of the Inquisition and cannot be rattled by a loss. Even a loss like Haven. Even having come so close to oblivion.

He thinks of the screaming, of standing in the Chantry waiting for the Herald and her team to return, unwilling to close the doors even as the sounds of the red Templars pressed closer and closer. He remembers the relief as each figure that ran up was one he recognized: Harritt and Flissa and Seggrit and more, each of them battered but alive, each of them saying that the Herald was right behind them. He remembers seeing her at last, bloody and vicious and vengeful, carving her way through the red Templars like Andraste reborn, full of a glowing, operatic fury. Most of all, he remembers the moment she chose to stay behind. Blood on her face and blood on her hands, charging him to save their people or die trying. In that moment he seemed to see her clearly for the first time, Andraste’s chosen champion with her head up like a wolf on the hunt as she strode out the doors without looking back and they closed behind her with grim finality.

He remembers lifting her from the snow, heart hammering so loudly he thought he was about to die, and wrapping his lion fur around her.

It is past time to be asleep: he had heard the watch mark the passing of midnight some time ago. His bed waits just above his head, full of nothing but nightmares. He couldn’t sleep now, in any case. The heat pours off his skin in waves, utterly unbearable, the reason why he refuses to have the roof of his tower fixed. He strides to the door on his left, out onto the battlements. The air is not markedly cooler out here, but the stone is; he leans his forehead against it, sleeves rolled up and forearms pressed to it as well, sighing as the stone leaches the heat from his blood. He had started to feel safer out here, stronger, since the Inquisitor had first pulled him aside and let him press her against these battlements, had kissed him with such reverence that he had forgotten everything but the taste of her. Everything – his responsibilities as Commander, the looming threat of Corypheus, his plans for finding new recruits, what he’d been doing moments before – everything except the lyrium. Even she could not bury the cravings in him, the desperate reaching. In a twisted way, his connection to her made the withdrawal worse. One craving always led to another, he supposed, and the lyrium was never far from his mind.

He had told her, of course. Standing here in the cold sunlight, looking over their soldiers training in the yard, braced for the hurt he might cause in telling her they could go no further.

She had given him only kindness, more than he deserved. “Whatever you need,” she’d said, and she was smiling. He hadn’t realized how scared he had been of her reaction until that moment. He forgot to breathe for so long that his fingertips started tingling. “I only want you to be safe, Cullen.”

“I cannot ask you to wait,” he said, because he had expected her to say as much and could not quite understand why she was taking this so well.

“And yet I will,” she said. She leaned over and kissed his cheek, lips soft against his stubble. “If that’s what you want, of course.”

“What I want and what I can handle are very different lately.”

The Inquisitor stood next to him, looked out at her castle, at her people. She seemed to be picking her words very carefully. “When I asked you, before, if you had left anyone special behind…and if you were looking now, you said no. What _do_ you want, exactly?”

He had never known how to answer that question. What he wanted was to stand beside her, hold her as she slept, follow her wherever she led. He wanted her to be in his life, woven into the fabric of it, constant as breathing. But that was all.

There had been fumbling encounters in Ferelden’s circle, Templars who were just as lonely as he was, who crawled into his bed between shifts when everything was quiet. He never sought after it, but he accepted what they offered because he was supposed to, because he was convinced that he was missing something, that he would love it if only he could be different. Less tired, maybe. Less damaged, less selfish, more relaxed. More normal. That change never came. Sex wasn’t a way to kill the loneliness. All it did was leave him feeling used and hollow. Eventually, he started turning them away. Without sex he had nothing to offer, and his fellow Templars left him entirely, found someone else to spend their time with. He would pass entire days without speaking. It bothered him, until the trauma of the circle’s breaking. Then he was as damaged as they’d made him feel, and he had an excuse to turn people away. There was a sick comfort in that, at least.

And that was what he told her: that he could offer a heart but not a body, knowing it was selfish, knowing it was not enough. It had never been enough. But she stood beside him patiently, waiting for him to say everything he had to, and he realized, gently and inescapably, that he loved her already.

What he was offering was not enough. But he thought of the Inquisitor, of how terribly noble she was, of how violently protective she could be, of her face as she stood amongst her faithful in the mountain pass and they sang for her, uncomfortable and awestruck and so, so alive. But more than that, he thought of a heart that took in everyone who asked for shelter, and that there might be a place for him there, too, with all the love he could offer.

“What I want most,” he said at last, “is some peace. But I also want to be with you, and it cannot be in the way you want.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “For a moment there, I thought you were about to leave me.”

“Maker, no. But it would be unfair of me to mislead you.”

She hummed, a noncommittal sound. “I’m glad you told me, Cullen, but I’m not about to storm off because of something as silly as that.”

“It’s not…”

“Silly? Yes, it is. So…no sex, I get that, but what else? The kissing doesn’t seem to bother you.”

He grinned helplessly. “You could grab my ass a little less often.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” she said haughtily, then laughed. “Well, we’ve got to start somewhere. Can we hold hands?”

He laughed, felt something in his chest loosen like a knot unravelling itself. “Yes, that seems pretty safe.” She immediately slipped her hand into his, then reached across him for his other hand until she held both. This capacity for acceptance was one he would never fathom. It felt fragile, precious, like the wrong word could sunder it beyond repair. He stared at their joined hands. “Inquisitor, if this…if this is all I can offer you, if I cannot ever give you more. I don’t want to give you false hope. I promise to love you in every way I am capable of, but the…usual one is beyond me. That won’t change.”

She looked at him with fond exasperation, as though he’d just shown up for breakfast with his shirt on backwards. “I only want what you’re comfortable offering, Cullen. I won’t ever ask you for more than that.”

He stood as though he’d been rooted to the wall itself. Time stretched, twisted down on itself, went somewhere deep inside him where the unfamiliar sensation of settling was sweeping the air from his lungs. He felt as though he had long ago dropped a stone in dark water, and it was only just now coming to rest, gently and at last, on some solid foundation.

“Maker’s breath,” he said softly. “You are more than I deserve.” He pulled her in close and she pulled in closer, slipped her arms around his waist, held him hard. He bowed his head over her, like a hymn he was hearing for the first time.

“Oh, I’m more than anyone deserves,” she said. “But you come pretty close.” Then she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him, sunlit and smiling.

For the next few days, they kept themselves secret. She would show up in his office unexpectedly, pull him from his duties for just a moment or two at a time, kiss him in the cold, open air with the sun above them. He was always the first to pull away, but she kept her word, never asked for more, never pressed him. He would leave her there and she would watch him go, and the memory of her hands in his, her lips on his, would make the rest of his day easier to bear.

Realistically, people knew about them. The battlements were hardly private, but if anyone saw them, they kept their mouths shut…at least to his face. They were left with peace, for days, peace in which they met quietly and often, wandering the garden, walking wall patrols together, meeting with Dennet to discuss the care of the horses. After a few days, they started visiting the Inquisitor’s friends together: sitting with Varric in front of the fireplace one evening as he told them stories about Hawke and Kirkwall and looked shrewdly between the two of them; sitting with Josephine at her desk to argue over paperwork as she sighed about their newly united front; eating a simple lunch with Bull and his Chargers which somehow turned into a mid-afternoon drinking contest that only ended when the Inquisitor got up on the Iron Bull’s shoulders and tried to challenge everyone to a joust. That didn’t end anything on its own, but the barkeep kicked them all out when Dalish got up on Krem’s shoulders and they actually started running at each other. They all spilled out into the sunlight laughing and staggering a bit, and the Inquisitor leaned on his arm as he made his way back to his office, promising to help with the paperwork she’d distracted him from. When they got back, however, she promptly curled up in his chair and fell asleep. He draped his lion fur over her, tucked in the corners. When his soldiers showed up to report, he shushed them and met them outside.

The night before she left for the Exalted Plains, she came to his office late, holding two steaming mugs in her hands. The hot cocoa was a Qunari delicacy that Bull had requisitioned somehow, and they sat together in the candlelight and looked over their work in companionable silence, elbows brushing. When Cullen finally rose to stretch and turn in, the Inquisitor came with him.

He told her about the nightmares. She brushed her lips over each of his eyelids and said nothing but _let them come. I am here._

She was gone for sixteen days. When she returned, she snuck into the castle ahead of her retinue and kicked open the door to his office with her arms full of wildflowers. He leaned over the bright, sweet honeysuckle and furled morning glories to kiss the pollen from her lips, and he couldn’t remember the last time he felt like this. He couldn’t remember if he had ever felt like this.

He sat down at his desk. For the first time since Ferelden, he wrote his sister a letter.

 

* * *

 

The first time she went to the Hissing Wastes, Cullen threw himself into work, into streamlining his guard schedule, into furious sparring with Blackwall. He knew that he should spend more time with everyone in the tavern at night, but without the Inquisitor he found himself becoming reticent. After a few weeks, he started spending a lot of time sitting with Varric in front of the fire.

There wasn’t much to miss about Kirkwall for Cullen, but it had been Varric’s home. It still was. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to about it, someone who knew it as well as he did, someone who would understand the jokes he made about the Hanged Man and the barrels full of junk that just accumulated around lowtown and the docks. He talked about Hawke, too. Nothing current, just stories – of blood, of violence, of building a family from scraps you find along the way.

It was the first time Cullen had realized how different he had become. The Templar who was tortured by mages could not have understood what Varric meant, but the Commander who had found a place beside them might. He was no longer the person he had run from by going to Kirkwall. He was not so afraid anymore. Not so weak.

If there was a family to be found here, he thought he might be strong enough to accept it, after all.

When Leliana’s people reported that the Inquisitor’s party was almost home, something about their demeanour made Cullen nervous. If he didn’t know better, he’d have said they were trying very hard not to laugh. Very few of Leliana’s scouts were given to the giggles, and nothing in their report was funny.

He knew his Inquisitor too well, though. He’d had a similar feeling of dread before she’d returned with a qunari-led mercenary company at her heels, and again before she rode in on the first of their dracolisks and poor Dennet had almost keeled right over in shock. He resigned himself to a day of finding his patience to deal with whatever surprise she was bringing home now.

But when they all poured through the gates, there was nobody else with them, and nothing strange about what they rode. The Inquisitor, however, was sitting up straight and proud, framed by the wide antlers of her hart like a conquering hero, and wearing nothing but a shit-eating grin and what looked very much like a great bear pelt. Cullen couldn’t do anything but stare. She caught his eye and gave him an exaggerated wink.

“Okay!” she called to the onlookers, gesturing to herself. “Okay, I…there’s a story here, I…this is – haaaahaha!” She interrupted herself with a helpless laugh, grabbing at her face. After a moment she wrestled herself back under control and wiped at her eyes, then gestured to Solas, who was still sitting astride his mount with an expression that Cullen could only describe as sour.

“So Solas was doing some – ” she wiggled her fingers and made a whooshing sound, “and he maybe caught me on fire a little bit – ”

“You ran in front of me!”

“ – but it’s fine because I look super hot right now. And not just because I was on fire! Right, Solas? Right, because…”

He refused to even look in her direction as he slipped from his mount and walked stiffly towards the keep, which only made her laugh harder. Sera, at least, laughed with her. On her other side, Cassandra was dismounting with an eye roll that told Cullen she’d been preparing that joke for a good chunk of their ride home.

As strange as her clothing and her jokes and her announcement was, the strangest part of the last few moments for Cullen was that he looked up at what a mess she was and loved her all the more for it, wild, singed hair and all.

She rode up to him, still smiling. “Is that exasperation I see?”

“You were gone for weeks,” he said. “You must have had other clothes with you.”

“Well, yeah,” she said, raising a teasing eyebrow. “But I had an excuse to wear this instead, so I couldn’t _bear_ to waste it.”

He groaned. “You were gone for weeks, and that’s the best you could come up with?”

“Excuse you, I am hilarious.”

“You were gone for weeks,” he said again, “and yet you are still out of arm’s reach.”

She laughed again, throwing her head back, and then tumbled straight from her saddle into his waiting arms. He caught her, set her on her feet, swept his hands back along her jaw, a path as familiar to him as his own veins, as the steps that led to the door of his childhood home. She leaned in and kissed him there in the courtyard, with the twilight settling in around them, but broke into a smile a moment later.

“I have to go wash,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I committed to wearing this thing because it was funny, but it stinks.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Cullen said, dropping a kiss on the end of her nose.

“You’re welcome to join me,” she said, “but after listening to Sera and Solas bicker the entire trip, I could use some alone time. Up to you.”

He knew her offer was made in good faith. He had to believe it was. But her invitation punched holes in him, a series of dark doors yawning open down in the core of him where all his old insecurities were buried. He knew that he was supposed to say yes. He knew that he should want to say yes. That was how relationships worked. By saying yes. By wanting to say yes.

She tapped his cheekbone, sharply enough to startle him. “Hey. It’s okay, Cullen. Stop twisting yourself into knots.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. An apology was stuck to the end of his tongue, a habit he was trying to break. Still, one remained when he said, “Another man wouldn’t hesitate.”

She huffed impatiently. “I don’t want that man. I only want you. Whatever that means, whatever you can give. Nothing more…but also nothing less. Okay? If you come join me, I can promise that the sight of you all wet and naked won’t drive me into uncontrollable lust.”

It was getting dark – perhaps she wouldn’t be able to see how red his face must be. Something about her smirk made him think she knew anyway. “I trust you. I do. But…maybe next time. Enjoy your peace and quiet while you can.”

She laced their fingers together, holding her great, stinky fur closed with her other hand. “I will. And I love you. And I have to go right now because I’m dangerously tempted to just leave this here and run to the baths Maker naked. I’d trade a bit of dignity to be free of this smell.”

“What a severe breach of decorum. Vivienne would never forgive you.”

“You don’t know that. I happen to have a very fine butt. Maybe she’d thank me for raising morale.” She kissed him once more, sweetly, and he let her go. “You’ll come by later?”

“Of course I will. See you soon.”

“Good.” She turned and took off for the stairs that led below the keep. “Next time!” she called over her shoulder.

The castle had ancient baths – ones that somehow still functioned – far beneath it. They’d been discovered during renovations, finely-hewn caverns swirling with steam and hot water that pushed up from hidden depths, walls gilded with elven frescoes. Cullen had seen hot springs before, but never this high up. As long as they worked, he didn’t care about the engineering behind it. She could have had a bath drawn in her quarters, of course – such extravagance would be well within her right as their Inquisitor – but he couldn’t imagine her creating extra work for her people for the sake of privacy. She wasn’t that sort of leader. It was part of why they all respected her, trusted her. Even Sera, who distrusted authority and power, seemed to like her.

He would never be able to fathom what he’d done to deserve her, to have found a home in a heart like that. He would never understand it. There was too much in him that could not be forgiven, but the Maker must have seen something good – something worth saving. If not, he would have died at the Circle, at Kirkwall, at Haven. He would have died on the roads in between. Perhaps his only purpose was to make it here: to stand, fight, and die for her, to do the Maker’s work for the Maker’s chosen and be redeemed by doing so. He would take that end gladly, if it came to that. Even that was a better fate than he deserved.

He shook his head, rubbed his neck, started to make his way back to his office. But the moon was only a few days away from being new and the castle crouched around him and the stars were wheeling overhead, and instead of heading inside he went to the gardens. The shadows here reminded him of patrolling Kirkwall’s hightown at night, smooth stone and carefully tended garden beds and the chantry board, serene in the moonlight. Kirkwall had never been home. But for a while, it was sanctuary. Meredith had never treated him any differently for being tortured, and no one else had known. Except, perhaps, Hawke. She always seemed to know things she had no business knowing, and the way she’d looked at him, sometimes…it made him wonder. She made him wonder about a lot of things over the years. He should ask Varric about her, should ask instead of just listen to stories. Despite the headaches she’d given him, he hoped she was doing alright. Wherever she was.

There was a pair of bodies tangled up in the darkest corner; Cullen could hear them, caught a glimpse of skin moving before he turned away, gave them a wide berth. He wasn’t being quiet, but if they knew someone was nearby, they didn’t seem to care. So neither did he. It was easy enough to ignore anyway, with the sky a dark bowl above him, with the nighttime chill pinching his ears, the faintest breeze in the trees. He thought of Kirkwall still, but only lazily. He was not homesick. Not for Kirkwall, not for Fereldan. He had never been less homesick in his life.

By the time he left, the giggling couple from the corner had snuck away. He made it up the stairs to the keep and, sitting with Varric just inside, was the Inquisitor and Dorian. As Cullen got closer, he could see that both of them were wrapped up in clean robes, still fresh from the baths.

Dorian’s Tevinter accent had always thrummed pleasantly inside Cullen’s head, but never more so than now.

“Commander! What good timing.” Dorian had his elbows resting on his knees, and his eyes were bright as they turned on Cullen. “Our dread Inquisitor was just about to tell me about the trouble she got into with…what was it? A quillback?”

“Gurgut,” she said, laughing. “You can’t wrestle a quillback, they’re all pokey.”

“Cassandra should really be telling this story,” Varric said.“Her exasperation makes it so much funnier, somehow. I heard that it went something like, ‘Cass. Cass, look. There’s a quillback over there. I’m gonna wrassle it.’”

“I don’t talk like that! And the next thing I said was ‘don’t tell Cullen’ and you know it.”

Dorian yawned. “Come now, how dull. Tell him about how you shouted a fade rift into submission. I still can’t believe that worked.”

“What kind of bullshit fade rift spawns a pride demon on the first wave? All I did was tell it to try that garbage twice and see what happened.”

“I seem to recall profanities. Loud ones.”

“Everyone’s a critic. I don’t see you avoiding a dangerous fight by yelling until it goes away.”

“I don’t wrestle the dangerous wildlife either. That’s quite firmly your job.”

“Apparently so.” She bounced over to where Cullen stood in stunned silence and kissed his cheek, grinning sheepishly.

Cullen looked from her to Dorian to Varric and back again. “How many times have you sworn Cassandra to secrecy for my sake?”

“Oh…all of them?”

“Literally every time she leaves the castle,” Dorian said, standing and stretching. “But you needn’t be concerned. She is always accompanied by three of the finest babysitters you could hope for.”

“Well,” Cullen said wryly, “I was going to be concerned anyway.”

“See, Sparkler? I told you he’d be fine.”

“I am going to bed,” Cullen said, dragging a hand down his face, and as he turned with the Inquisitor tucked under his arm, the rich sound of Dorian’s laughter followed them out of the hall.

 

* * *

 

He had never expected to like Dorian. They hardly spoke to each other at the beginning; the one time he could recall was when Dorian barged into the war room before the Inquisitor’s horrifying trip to Redcliffe and the future, when they acquired the mages as allies against Cullen’s best advice.

He had been wrong to suggest the Templars; he could see that now. He would have chosen them – while knowing what they were, how twisted they had become, while knowing that the Seekers were acting suspiciously – and it would have been a grave folly, and evidence of how shortsighted he had been. Even having left the order, having sought this new start without his lyrium chains and without his old hatred, he still blindly trusted the Templars more. It made him sick to think of it.

He had not come so far as he had claimed to the Herald, when they first spoke back at Haven. The old wounds were still closing, after all. It would take time. But the nightmares weren’t helping, and the lyrium withdrawal made them worse. When he looked at Dorian in the war room, argued against him and ultimately lost, all he could think of was what had happened every time he had ever been guardian to a group of mages.

They had not spoken afterwards, either. Cullen spent most of his time trying to find a safe space in Haven for their new allies, a task that would have been unbearable without constantly hinting to the mage leaders that Cassandra could somehow settle their grievances. Watching them storm away after her inevitable dressing-down was often the highlight of his day. That, and the times the Herald would stop by – nervous back then, or just unsure of her place there, with concern on her face and the anchor shimmering malevolently on her palm. But she always listened to his complaints, asked him questions, and Josephine said she was doing the same with everyone: learning their names, their stories, their goals and fears. Cullen had never seen anything like it. But Dorian – between the events of Redcliffe and the attack on Haven, Cullen didn’t remember seeing him even once.

 It wasn’t until Skyhold, until the Herald had become the Inquisitor, that Cullen had realized many of his new recruits had never faced properly trained mages and vice versa. Their mage allies were Circle-bred, for the most part, and were never taught how to counter Templar abilities. Given that corrupted, incredibly powerful Templars now formed the bulk of Corypheus’ army, it was a problem that needed to be corrected as quickly as possible. He’d mentioned his concern to the Inquisitor, and Dorian had appeared on the training grounds shortly thereafter, boasting loudly about how selfless it was for him to volunteer for this task.

Cullen had his doubts, but Dorian had proceeded to match even his best Templars. Looking back, he knows it was unfair of him to assume that his place in the Inquisitor’s inner circle was gained through friendship or deference or anything but ability; the thought was unfair to both Dorian and the Inquisitor. He should have known that she chose only the best. Dorian was a mage who had never been taught to be ashamed of his magic, and he made it sing in a way Cullen had never experienced. For the first time since his days in the Fereldan Circle, he was reminded that magic could be beautiful as well as dangerous. When Dorian invited him to a game of chess some days later, Cullen accepted with no hesitation.

They played in the garden, or in what could have been a garden, once. The soil had been untended for too long, but the Inquisitor had insisted on trying to save it; for now, several pots of rich earth held seedlings she’d gathered. When they were strong enough, they’d be moved to the planter beds. It was the quietest place they could find without disappearing entirely. So Cullen set the board while Dorian poured them some wine and chatted amiably about their troops and their training, which he kept calling ‘practice’.

“You know,” said Dorian as Cullen set the last piece and offered him the first move, “I’m happy to help out, but you should really ask Solas for some pointers. He is an apostate, after all, and his perspective is…unique.”

“I have considered it. I cannot imagine that he would agree.”

“Oh, you never know. He might love the chance to sneer about it. Being high and mighty does seem to be his only waking hobby.”

“He…is an expert on more than the Fade, certainly.”

“My, my.” Dorian smiled, let his hand hover over the board as he considered his next move. “Are you going to make the Inquisitor ask him for you?”

Cullen snorted out a laugh, kicking the corner of the table. The pieces shuddered and Dorian frowned at the board as he nudged them back into place. “I was waiting for you to give me a hard time about that.”

“So you weren’t just scared of the big, bad mage from Tevinter?”

He had asked casually, almost a joke, but hadn’t quite hit the mark. For the first time, Cullen considered the way people talked about Dorian’s presence at the Inquisitor’s side, the suspicion, the whispers. Dorian had always seemed above such base rumour, but the question had been loaded with doubt. He knew what people said, apparently. He worried about it.

“No,” Cullen said firmly, ignoring the game entirely for the moment. Dorian couldn’t quite meet his gaze. “I would have asked you myself, once I’d worked it all through. The Inquisitor just got there first. I never asked her to intervene, either. I was thinking out loud, more than anything, that we were facing Templars and our mages hadn’t ever fought them before. She had a solution, so she just…fixed the problem.”

“She does do that, doesn’t she.”

Cullen smiled. “She does.”

They passed a few turns in silence. Mother Giselle wandered by and looked over, but didn’t stop. “So,” said Dorian, “are you going to make the Inquisitor talk to him?”

“Maker, yes,” he answered, so quickly that Dorian laughed.

Their game became a habit, a much-needed distraction from the rigours of war. By the time the Inquisitor discovered them at it, he was more or less immune to Dorian’s charm and Dorian was decidedly immune to his sarcasm.

 

* * *

 

A week later, the Inquisitor’s travelling party was gathered in the courtyard, preparing to ride out for the Emprise du Lion. Cullen cupped his hands and bent so that the Inquisitor could step up, and she planted a kiss in his hair as she took him up on the offer. She swung a leg over her massive white hart and it snorted and pranced under her, excited to be away, and she laughed, sitting easy in the saddle. Cullen stood in the cold sunlight with an ache deep in his bones. On her mount, she cut an imposing figure: straight-backed and proud and powerful, a dangerous silhouette against the blinding light of the day. He was well aware that she was one of the most capable people in Thedas, or one of the luckiest. Maybe both. She had walked away from situations that would have left him broken. He knew all of that. He still would not – would never, not for the rest his days – stop worrying whenever she rode away from him, out into a world that was desperate to kill her.

Around her, Dorian, Cassandra, and Varric were preparing to leave as well. Varric checked the straps that held his precious crossbow, Cassandra fretted to a farrier over how much skinnier her courser felt, and Dorian watched everything in his relaxed way, face utterly neutral.

Cullen was not given to jealousy, but when he looked at her chosen few he could not quite suppress it. Just once he wanted to ride away with her. Just once. To follow her wherever she led, to see to her safety himself. Cassandra would tear him a new breathing hole for implying that she could not be an effective safeguard, and he knew that the Inquisitor’s inner circle would protect her at any cost. But he still wanted to go with her, to be part of the stories she brought back. Just once. But he had promised her that what happened to Haven would not happen here. All he could do was make sure she had a home to come back to. All he could do was protect what she left behind when she went out to save the world.

Morbid thoughts. He let his hands rest on his sword, as much a nervous gesture as rubbing his neck, and noticed that Dorian’s watchful gaze had fallen on him. The Tevinter lifted an eyebrow at him, glanced over at the Inquisitor, who was being handed a few last-minute objectives by one of Leliana’s people, and sidled his Imperial over to Cullen.

“Commander!” he said. “You seem a little green around the gills. Sick with envy, I understand, but you can’t take vacations willy-nilly like we fortunate few.” Varric laughed, turning to Cassandra, and Dorian’s voice dropped to a murmur. “You know she will worry about leaving, if you let her see you this way.”

Cullen was so shocked that he took half a step back, then managed to wrestle his features into an appropriately exasperated smile. “Off you go, Tevinter,” he said lightly. “Maybe I’ll requisition your nice armchair while you’re away.”

Dorian gave him a secret wink, then swung his mount around to join the Inquisitor, who had been watching them fondly.

“Be safe,” Cullen called to her, and she grinned in a way that was not entirely reassuring, then wheeled her mount and trotted off. Before Dorian followed, he turned to give an exaggerated wave to the gathered onlookers, some of whom waved enthusiastically back. When Cullen rolled his eyes, Dorian laughed, and something low in Cullen’s gut clenched in a pleasantly breathless sort of way. He watched his Inquisitor vanish out the gate with three of her best on her heels, but this time, he also watched Dorian, wondering what in Andraste’s name that had been.

 

* * *

 

He couldn’t help but notice, over the next few months, that Dorian had quickly become a constant in her traveling party. It was obvious to anyone that Dorian was charming…and personable, and funny, and handsome, as well as being an undeniably skilled mage. Perhaps the Inquisitor was taking extra care to cultivate the relationship because of Dorian’s heritage, too – it could only benefit the Inquisition to have a strong Tevinter ally. There was nothing wrong with her taking Dorian everywhere, with the way they spent a lot of their free time together, with her dedication to fulfilling Dorian’s request that they hunt down the Venatori. The Inquisitor, of course, could do as she liked. He’d agreed to support her decisions, but he didn’t have to like them.

It wasn’t until he walked into the tavern in search of her and saw the two of them crammed comfortably next to each other at the packed table that he fully comprehended the depth of the jealousy he’d been ignoring.

It was petty, such jealousy. Unworthy of his Inquisitor, unworthy of himself. But it twisted in him when he saw them sitting together all the same. Instead of joining them at the table, he turned and walked back out into the night, alone.

He had never felt any malice in their conversations, no words turned aside whenever he did join them, no strange looks between them. He didn’t think that the Inquisitor was losing interest in him – though he was smart enough to understand that was a real possibility – and he didn’t think that Dorian was interested in her, despite the flirting. Dorian flirted with everyone, even Cullen, and he was handsome enough that if he’d wanted some romantic conquest, he could have had it by now.

But Cullen understood at the same time that he had always been terrible at picking up signals. Attraction was not something he had ever had to navigate. All he knew about that language was that he did not speak it – could not, maybe, the form of it so incomprehensible that he barely even recognized the words.

So he asked her, late one night as she rested in bed with him, curled up with her head on his chest, to tell him more about Dorian.

“I was wondering how to bring that up,” she said with a yawn. She shifted closer to him, tucked herself a little more safely into the crook of his arm, hummed thoughtfully. “You’ve been strange around him, lately. Bull thinks you’re jealous.”

Cullen said nothing, drawing a nervous zigzag on her arm instead. She lifted her head to look at him. “You are!” She jabbed him in the chest with a finger. “Cullen Stanton Rutherford, Commander of the Inquisition’s forces, former Templar of the Order, and jealous old nug!”

“That’s uncalled for,” he said lightly. “I’m not that old.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said with a grin. “What sort of jealous nug would you like me to call you?”

“I can think of a few alternatives,” he said, but his smile died faster than hers. Weeks of jealousy had left him feeling raw, and the lyrium scratched at his skin from the inside, ceaseless, dull. But she watched him steadily, soft and patient in the candlelight, hair unbound and tumbling over her shoulders, and he could endure it. He reached up, ran his thumb over her cheekbone. Still real. Still here. “If you ever did want…something else. I would understand.”

She sighed. “We need to work on your self-esteem. I have you. Why would I need anything else?”

“You know why.”

“Oh, Cullen.” For some reason, her smile returned full force. She kissed his collarbone and then his jaw in quick succession, then grabbed his chin and kissed him properly, full of smiling, glowing warmth. “Are you always going to be so grim about that?”

He caught his breath looking up at her as she leaned over him and didn’t know how he could ever have doubted. “Few things are more likely,” he said, and her eyes lit up.

“How about…now!” She ripped the blanket back and ducked her head quickly and blew a raspberry on his stomach, and he kicked and jerked reflexively, prying her away and laughing as she held on, but he pushed and wrestled her back further and further. She realized what he was doing a second too late, grabbing for a hold as she tipped over the edge of the bed with a shriek and hit the floor, then laid there cackling to herself.

Cullen leaned over the edge. Her hair was in her face and she was mostly naked and totally undignified as she lay on the floor and stared back up at him, pulling her hair back, and she was beautiful and ridiculous and here, unbelievably here.

“Dorian’s just a friend, you know.” She spat out the last of her hair and got up on her knees, resting her arms on the bed so her face was only an inch away from his. “I don’t think he has very many. His homeland casts a long shadow over him.”

“He is lucky to have you, then.”

“We’re lucky to have each other.” She paused, considering. “He’s the best friend I’ve ever had. Except you, of course. Sometimes I think…I don’t know. He’s more than that, too. He’s something else.”

Cullen gathered up her fingers and kissed her knuckles, giving her room to continue if she wanted. She sat back on her heels, no longer looking at him, thinking hard.

“I recognize something in him. I can’t explain it any better than that. Like I’ve known him for years instead of months. Like a song I only half-remember.” She blinked. “It’s platonic,” she said quickly, “but I love that he’s in my life. I love him, I think.”

“I understand,” Cullen said, surprising them both. “It’s how I felt when I met you.”

The silence held between them for a long moment. “For what it’s worth,” she said, “I think you two would get along really well.”

“I think you’re right.” He hadn’t mentioned what had passed between him and Dorian in the courtyard, when Dorian had looked over and seen right through him. When he’d smiled in the sunlight and turned to leave and Cullen had watched them ride off together. When he’d been struck, however faintly, by the same feeling the Inquisitor had just struggled to describe. “I think you’re more right than you know.”

“Suppose you should start spending some time with him, then.”

“I suppose you’re right about that, too.” Cullen reached for her, and she gladly let him pull her back onto the bed, kicking her way under the covers. When she was settled, he blew out the candle. Night fell into all the corners of the room, leaving just the sound of their breathing and the warmth of her curled up next to him.

“Cullen, you said you’ve been with men before. Not in the way you wanted, I know, but…do you have a preference? If you do end up liking Dorian – ”

“What if he doesn’t like me? I’m boring, you know.”

She punched him in the shoulder. “I have it on good authority that he will. Just listen. No matter what happens, you don’t have to be jealous, and I promise I won’t be jealous. Okay? I have enough love for both of you. And for my strange spirit child and my grumpy bear warden and my not-very-elfy archer thief and the rest of them. And my horses and my scouts and my advisors and the entire Inquisition, and everyone we’ve found along the way. Love is never lessened by having more of it. I’m not going to worry, okay? And neither should you.”

Cullen hugged her tighter, realizing that all of his earlier fears had gone. There had been a rift in him and, sometime during their conversation, she had closed it, as surely as she closed the rest. It was a talent of hers. It was a gift. “Goodnight, then,” he said at length, realizing that there was nothing he could add to that.

“I love you,” she said, and kissed him goodnight, and settled back down.

“You are the greatest light I have ever known,” he said in return, and felt the corner of her mouth curve upwards against his chest. Her fingers flexed on his side and he could feel her heartbeat on his forearm where it curved over her back. “I’ve been alone for most of my life. I will gladly take whatever love I can find, regardless of where it comes from.”

“Good,” she said drowsily, and promptly fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

For the first time in months, the Inquisitor rode out the gates of Skyhold without Dorian at her side. He stood in the courtyard with Cullen and the rest, staring, as though he couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong.

Cullen nudged him with an elbow and felt Dorian twitch, startled. “If you’re not busy…”

Dorian collected himself, with an air very much like a bird smoothing its feathers back into place. “Oh. What do you have in mind?”

“Come walk with me,” Cullen said, and watched some of the weight fall from Dorian’s expression. “It’s not often we both have some free time.”

They wandered across the grounds to where Cassandra was already back to work on her training dummies. Dorian needled her about some book as they passed, and Cullen swore he saw the Seeker’s ears turn red, but conceded to himself that he must have imagined it. Dorian was better at holding a conversation, and Cullen let him carry them along as they took the stairs to the battlements and then along them. Apparently, Dorian suspected that he’d annoyed the Inquisitor somehow, and that being left behind was a punishment of sorts.

When they came to his office, Cullen ducked out of his fur and folded it neatly on his desk. It was late afternoon, and the sun was still too hot to bear if they were going to be outside. He made sure to reassure Dorian that he’d done nothing wrong as far as he knew and, for the first time, Dorian looked at him a bit suspiciously.

“The two of you are up to something, then, aren’t you,” he said. “I do hope it’s exciting.”

“Perhaps not by Tevinter standards. All I’m planning for the next hour or so is lunch.”

“At least you’ve had the common sense to choose good company.”

Cullen smiled. “I can think of…” He trailed off and looked towards the door. Faint shouting, from somewhere outside.

Dorian noticed, too. They exchanged a quick glance and then ran outside as the shouting escalated, and Cullen immediately saw that the commotion was coming from the training grounds. Bodies piled on bodies, fists swinging. More piling in from the sidelines. He was moving before he’d even fully taken it in.

Running towards a fight, even one among his own people, made his blood sing notes of blue. He knew the feeling intimately, knew it as the first dizzying push of the craving that was never buried too deeply to reach. He clattered down the stairs and hurdled the fence that enclosed the sparring rings, aiming straight at the center of the fighting and shouting commands to stop. At the sound of his voice, several of the combatants leapt away from each other. Most did not. Cullen waded through them, seizing one man by the back of his shirt and hurling him backwards, catching the cocked fist of another and using it to pull him off-balance.

He found Rylen, bleeding heavily from his nose and grunting as he dove between two of the brawlers and shoved one of them back with both hands. One of his lieutenants, a short woman, caught him as he stumbled and put him in the dirt.

“ENOUGH!” Cullen shouted from the middle of the crowd, and this time, the sound of his voice sent a ripple through it. The brawling juddered to a stop over the course of a long few seconds as the familiar voice of their commander punched through to their common sense. The man the lieutenant had put in the dirt stood shakily. “Nobody leaves!” Cullen ordered, voice abrasive in the sudden calm. “Rylen, what happened here?”

His captain was pinching his nose, trying to stem the flow of blood. “No idea, ser. We were drilling hand-to-hand and someone threw a punch. Went downhill from there.”

“I saw it, ser.” The lieutenant saluted briefly, and when Cullen nodded she gestured to the man she’d taken down. “Brixley took issue with our Inquisitor, ser. I didn’t catch the details, but some of his fellows took it upon themselves to correct him.”

“Then I will see you in my office, soldier,” Cullen said icily. Brixley, face already swelling purple and red, spat at Cullen’s feet and let himself be hustled away. “Lieutenant, I expect the names of every person present in a list on my desk within the hour, even onlookers and non-military personnel.”

The woman saluted. Cullen opened his tone up to include the whole crowd. “You are all the Inquisition. Such conduct is unacceptable. You will stand and be counted until the lieutenant dismisses you, regardless of rank. Anyone who attempts to leave will be given to Leliana.”

He stood for a moment longer, then turned and walked away in a straight line, soldiers ducking neatly aside to make room for him to pass.

Dorian stood on the outskirts of the mess, keeping a watchful eye on the edges of the crowd, probably on guard for anyone attempting to sneak away. He gave Cullen a rueful wave as he strode past on the way to his office with Rylen on his heels, and Cullen could only return a sigh, wishing he hadn’t been reminded of what he’d almost had instead of this headache: some food, maybe some quiet sunshine. The lyrium hidden carefully away instead of scraping at his back molars with an itch that made him want to tear them out.

What he’d been looking forward to the most was Dorian next to him. Cullen wanted to ask him about Tevinter. About his family, about Alexius. Cullen wanted to rest in the deep thrum of his voice as he went on a tangent about history or magic or literature. He wanted to sit next to him, close enough that their shoulders touched, and ask him, somehow, if he was happy here.

Instead, he had Rylen bleeding from his face and this Brixley person standing in front of his desk and in that moment, in a small, selfish, petty corner of his mind, he hated the both of them.

He ended up working later than intended organizing the problematic soldiers into work details, then assembling his captains for a lecture on decorum. As they left – with varying degrees of contrition, he noted – a hand caught the door before it could swing closed and Dorian slipped inside, a cloth bundle tucked under his arm.

“I knew you’d gotten held up,” he said before Cullen could say anything. “But even Commanders of Inquisitions need to eat. Here, I brought – ” He unwrapped the bundle and let its contents tumble out onto the desk: two apples, some bread, a heel of suspicious cheese and half a bottle of wine. “Tada! I’m not very good at pilfering, I’m afraid. Sera offered, but I don’t quite trust food that she’s touched. I can’t help but feel that she’s rubbed all of it on the bottoms of her feet.”

Cullen nudged the cheese with the wine bottle. “You’re sure she hasn’t been at this cheese, then?”

Dorian chuckled. “It’s not to my taste, either. I wasn’t sure what you would like.”

“Join me,” Cullen said, stripping off his gloves and bundling the food back up.

“Odd. I was under the impression you were chained to this desk.”

“Only most of the time.” Cullen looked to his left and right, then chose the door that led above the stables. “Today, I’m tired. Skyhold won’t fall apart in the next few hours. Let’s find the last of the sunlight.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” said Dorian quietly, and Cullen heard the smile in his voice.

So they sat with their backs to the balustrade and their faces turned into the sun above Blackwall’s usual haunt and shared their meal. Neither of them touched the cheese. They didn’t talk too much, which Cullen was grateful for after the day he’d had. But as the sun slipped over the horizon Dorian tipped his head to the side, hummed thoughtfully.

“You know, Felix – Alexius’ son – used to visit me when I was working late in his father’s study. He brought me food he’d snuck from the kitchens. He was always…”

Dorian trailed off and didn’t finish his thought. Cullen didn’t miss the past tense, wondered when it had happened. He hoped Dorian hadn’t been dealing with it on his own.

“It sounds like you think very highly of him.”

“The world is often far too harsh on the best of us. Felix deserved better than the hand he was dealt. Regardless, you’re lucky I had the benefit of his good example. I’m sure I wouldn’t be much good at gestures otherwise.”

“Is that what this was? A gesture?”

“It was food first, of course. You must have been starving. But that’s what friendships are built on, isn’t it? Little things. The ways we tell each other ‘take care of yourself, you idiot.’ That was my understanding, at least.”

Cullen eyeballed the height of the wall, wound up for a throw, and chucked his apple core over it. “That’s an interesting strategy,” Cullen said. “When I’m trying to make friends, I let them win at chess.”

“You mean…” Dorian abruptly shoved to his feet and turned his nose up with a haughty sniff. “If you’re going to be ridiculous, I might as well go.”

Cullen laughed and grabbed for him, without hesitating, without thinking. Dorian’s hand was there, and he grabbed it, and Dorian tensed up instantly. Then, reinterpreting the gesture, he helped pull Cullen to his feet before delicately pulling away.

His fingers tingled where they had touched Dorian’s, and his blood pulled in him like a tide, strong and deep and undeniable, as though every part of him wanted to reach out again. But Dorian was a shore protected by the tallest cliffs, and Cullen knew that he would only smash against them until Dorian agreed to meet him halfway. “Don’t go,” Cullen said.

“Fine,” Dorian scoffed, leaning his forearms on the ramparts. “But if you’re trying to take partial credit for my victories…”

Cullen shrugged innocently.

“You’re being serious, aren’t you? You let me win?”

“Only two out of three.”

“Vishante kaffas. Perhaps I should have let Sera touch your food.”

“She would have found better wine, at least. Where did you even get this rotgut?”

“Well, if we’re confessing things, I have to admit this might be more vinegar than wine. It did come from the kitchen, after all.”

“I wouldn’t try to steal a bottle from the bartender, either. Are there even grapes in this?”

Dorian took the bottle from him, took a swig, made a face, and passed it back. “Yes. I’d say at least two grapes. Maybe three, if we’re lucky.”

Cullen laughed, still feeling the warmth of the vanished sunshine against his skin, comfortable with the cold fingers of nighttime creeping in at the edges. The heat might be from the wine. It was hard to tell. All he knew was that he was happy. Even briefly, even just for this moment. Even with the Inquisitor out in the world, far away and safe, Maker willing.

So they stood together, shoulder to shoulder, as the moon swung up into the sky and the castle settled into a different rhythm around them, lamps being lit against the dark.

Something about secrets made them lighter this close to midnight, with the weight of a day behind them and nothing but sleep ahead. Maybe it was the wine. Either way, leaning on the highest parapet above the stables, with the sleeping Skyhold spread out beneath them and a river of stars above, Cullen told Dorian about the lyrium.

It felt strange to speak of it. Dangerous. Dorian held himself very still, and Cullen didn’t know what that meant.

“As far as I know, it’s never been done. Attempted, surely. But never with success.” Cullen looked down at his hands, wondering how far he wanted to go with this. He’d heard Cole talk about healing the hurt, about how the bad things roll around inside of you and build on themselves until you choke. That sometimes the only thing that will help is giving them air. And he was tired of carrying Uldred’s name inside of him like a rot.

“Before I was here, I was in Kirkwall,” he found himself saying. “The apostate who blew up the Chantry, I knew him. I’d spoken to him often. He was one of Hawke’s friends – I’m not sure how current you are on Fereldan politics, but Hawke was named the Champion of Kirkwall after the Qunari…it’s not important.”

“I know a little about Hawke,” said Dorian. “But everyone in Tevinter knows about the Qunari of Kirkwall. And this Anders fellow, of course.”

“Everyone knows about Kirkwall’s circle. Few know about Fereldan’s. But I was there, too. There when it fell.”

Talking more to the dark, distant bulk of the encircling mountains than to Dorian, who stood quiet and calm beside him, Cullen told him the story – more than he had told the Inquisitor, more than he had ever said aloud since it had happened. He tried to scrub the blood out of the telling. He didn’t want to be specific, didn’t want to feel the places where the old wounds still hadn’t closed properly, didn’t want to touch the places in his brain that had already begun to fray when the warden showed up, unlooked for and undaunted, Wynne behind her barefooted and bloody and vengeful.

“I left Fereldan. I left the Free Marches. After all of that, I had to leave the order behind me as well. I couldn’t stand to be a part of that life any longer. Leaving might still kill me. But I have to try.”

His fists were clenched, hard, inside his gloves. Dorian was facing the other way, but he’d sidled closer so that their shoulders bumped together. Cullen ducked his head, took a breath. Once he’d started, the words had burned their way out of him. He felt hollow. He felt okay. Not better, but okay.

“The lyrium, then. There must be…withdrawal of some kind?”

Cullen didn’t answer. He was treading a line already, the craving like fingernails being dragged down his bones. His bowed head was answer enough, apparently.

“I’ll do some reading,” Dorian mused. “There must be something that helps.”

“Good luck,” Cullen said, standing upright at last. “I’ve looked everywhere. The only thing I’ve found that helps at all is the cold.”

Dorian gave him a sideways glance. “Cold? Is that why you won’t let them fix the hole in your ceiling? There’s a wager on that, you know.”

Cullen chuckled, surprising himself. “Of course there is.” He pushed himself off the wall. “The cravings are like a fever. In the early days, it was worse: delusions, disorientation, nausea. They are easier to bear, now. But Cassandra has orders to relieve me from my position if I become unreliable.”

“You do your job while you’re that ill? It’s a wonder you don’t just keel over.”

“There are days when I am tempted,” he said with a smile. Then, after a pause, “I must ask you to keep this between us, Dorian. Our soldiers cannot know. Doubt will kill an army as quickly as swords.”

“You’re not wrong there.” The empty wine bottle hung loosely from Dorian’s fingers. “For what it’s worth, Cullen…I’m sorry. If you need anything, you have but to ask.”

When he glanced over, Dorian was looking right at him. There was something on his face that Cullen didn’t know how to approach – something in a language he didn’t recognize, but had heard before. Something cautious.

 

* * *

 

Some days later, the Inquisitor returned. Cullen and Dorian met her together, standing in the courtyard as her people cheered her homecoming. Cullen swung her down from her hart and she threw her arms around his neck, planting a sloppy kiss on his cheek with a laugh. Dorian ruffled her hair affectionately when she pulled away, and before she could do anything more her expression changed. She was staring beyond Dorian to where Mother Giselle waited, and the hair on the back of Cullen’s neck stood up.

The two of them retreated as the Inquisitor went to the revered Mother and they ducked into the great hall for some privacy. Cullen wasn’t expecting to see her for some time, but she burst into his office not half an hour later.

“Cullen, I’m sorry, but we’re leaving for Redcliffe. It’s nothing serious, okay? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He came around his desk. She was agitated, a current of energy pulsing through the mark on her palm. “You can’t tell me what’s going on?”

She bit her lip. “It’s not my place to say. Might be nothing.”

“Are you alright, though?”

“Yes. I – yes. Of course.”

He took both her hands in his. “Then I need to know nothing else. Just come home safely.”

“I love you,” she said quietly.

“And I you.” He kissed the back of her marked hand, and she turned from him exactly as she’d done at Haven, grim and resolute, hurling herself into the fights that no one else could take on. Her party was already mounted and waiting for her in the courtyard, and Dorian’s mount skittered under him, nervous because its rider was nervous.

None of it was a good sign. There was nothing he could do, though. Nothing but pray. So he went to the chapel, knelt before Andraste’s outstretched hands and calm face, and let the light of the Maker settle the storm in him.

Given how disastrous their last trip to Redcliffe had been, Cullen spent the weeks worrying, pushing his soldiers harder than ever. Vivienne stepped in to train them, and she openly approved of his strict discipline. She was even more dangerous than Dorian, more efficient. Her magic was beautiful in the way a frozen waterfall is beautiful: towering and cold and impersonal, so much raw power held static and utterly obedient that one could only marvel at it. Unlike Dorian, she made him nervous, made him itch for the rush of lyrium that would enable him to put her down if he needed to.

By night, lying in his loft and staring at the stars through the gaping hole in the ceiling, he worried. He always worried. But he could not help the Inquisitor, out there in the world. All he could do was protect what she’d left behind. He thought of Dorian, of how much he wished for the simple distraction of their daily games. The thought of asking anyone else made him feel queasy, and it was in those moments, alone in the dark, that he began to realize that he didn’t miss the games as much as he missed the man. The idea was strange in that it should have felt stranger. Instead, he carried it with him as comfortably as a favourite shirt. Such was often the way, he thought, with arriving at last to something true.

After the Inquisitor had been gone a week, he took up a shield and joined his men in the ring. He was only hoping for a distraction, but Vivienne took it as a challenge, or maybe an opportunity. She knew only that he was a Templar, high-ranking before his defection. It was enough to test him. So when he’d put his third opponent of the day in the dirt, she issued her challenge: a ring of frost that snapped closed around him, cold lightning that dared him to cross.

She could not have known. He was already nervous around her, nervous around their mage allies, vulnerable without the lyrium that had protected him from mages in the past. So when she challenged, he reacted. Their scuffle was fast and vicious. He closed on her, shield and practice sword in hand, quicker than she could counter, swung wide to draw her barrier out. She flashed out a burst of ice spikes which he caught on his shield, dull thudding drumbeats, and a heavy, ear-popping punch of wind that he caught in his gut, but he continued, breathless, savagely at home in the stacks of moves and countermoves, fear like claws in the back of his neck. Her staff spun, dizzying arcs of light and energy. He moved between them, dodging with an instinct he hadn’t thought he still possessed, until she let a spell sizzle on the end of her staff and her hand snaked out, impossibly fast, to slam a palm onto his chest. The force of the concentrated spell sent him soaring.

He picked himself up and spat, blood and dirt, shield up, and only then realized that his soldiers were cheering. Vivienne hadn’t moved: she stood with her hand still outstretched, breathing hard, staring at him with an indecipherable expression. Rylen helped him stand, and Cullen left without a word.

He only barely made it back to his office. As soon as he got the door shut, he leaned back against it, slid down onto the floor, dug his fingers into his upper arms and let his body curl up tight as the hunger burned in his veins, bright blue and ruinous.

Cassandra began to check in on him. She cited errant reports, at first, or a sudden curiosity about Skyhold’s fortifications. Lying had never been a talent of hers, and neither was admitting that she was concerned. He had asked her to monitor his condition, and it was reassuring, at least, to know she took that duty seriously.

Once, Leliana appeared in his doorway. The soldiers who were delivering their reports were so startled that they tripped over each other on their way out the door.

Few at Skyhold knew that Leliana had been with the Hero of Ferelden at the Circle. She had seen him broken and withered and choking on his fear, knew how far he had come. She had never said anything about it, but that day, she asked him if he was alright and he knew what she meant. He took a long time to answer. What he eventually said was _Not yet._

Hours later, blessedly, their scouts relayed that the Inquisitor and her party were approaching Skyhold, that they would make the trip up the mountains the following day, that they were not pursued and not injured. All was well, Cullen thought. They were almost home. All would be well.

When the Inquisitor and Dorian finally returned, however, something was wrong. They clattered into the courtyard on their mounts in the early afternoon, and Cullen was there to greet them. Dorian retreated immediately, going directly up the stairs without saying a word. The Inquisitor looked weary, sad; Cullen stood with her mount’s bridle in hand and watched her as she watched Dorian walk away. The rigid concern in her body made his heart ache. When Dorian had gone, she turned her gaze to his as though she was seeing him from very far away.

He knew she would be busy after her absence. He knew she would come to him when she could. The difficulties of the last weeks seemed smaller, now that she was back. So he helped her off her mount, took her hands in his just briefly – just long enough to press a kiss to her knuckles, to draw a weary smile from her – and let her be swept away by the demands of her position, herded into the keep amidst a storm of paper and voices and problems.

By the time she managed to escape, he was already in bed. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep; the reports he’d been reading were lying on his chest and his candle had burned all the way out in its holder when he woke at the creaking rungs of the ladder.

“Cullen,” the Inquisitor said hesitantly, “can you come down here, please?”

“Make sure he’s decent,” said Dorian in a dry voice from below.

He shuffled his reports aside, reaching in the dark for his fur cloak. “Maker’s breath,” he said groggily, shaking his head to clear the spiderwebs from it. He couldn’t find the bloody thing, couldn’t concentrate. He’d been short on sleep lately, white-knuckling it through the last few days of their absence. Being woken had given him a headache. “Can it not wait until morning?”

Instead of repeating his question, the Inquisitor just sighed and climbed the last few rungs into his loft. “Dorian, just come up here.”

“Inquisitor, the nature of this conversation…”

“I’m going to sleep in about three minutes whether you’ve talked or not,” she said.

“Oh, alright!” Dorian snapped. There was a moment of near-silence as he climbed in which the Inquisitor shuffled over and Cullen listened to her kicking off her boots.

Dorian huffed a bit at the top of the ladder, voice suddenly much closer. “May I put on a light?” he said. “It’s very strange talking to someone you can’t see.”

“Of course you may,” Cullen grumbled, putting a hand over his eyes to cut the brightness. Instead of a flame, though, Dorian cupped his hands together and then blew into them, releasing a cluster of gently glowing embers that drifted slowly apart. Cullen thought of Vivienne’s magic and how it chilled him in all the wrong ways. This, though: this was magic that he loved. For the first time, he wondered if that feeling came from the magic or the man. He thought back to the last few weeks, to the way he had missed both of them in different ways, distinctly but equally. The embers drifted slowly above the three of them, the Inquisitor on the floor between them with her knees drawn up, Cullen propped up on one elbow, Dorian half-present, still standing on the ladder with his elbows resting on the floor. He was watching Cullen’s face and seemed puzzled by what he found there. When Cullen looked over and caught him staring, Dorian didn’t look away.

“My father…sent a message.” Dorian seemed somewhat adrift, like he was unsure of where to start. “It was a trick, of course, but we…we went to talk to him.”

“A trick?”

Dorian waved a hand impatiently. “That part is less surprising than you would think. But we went. And I’m sure everyone will be talking about it tomorrow, and I wanted you to hear the story from me.”

The Inquisitor narrowed her eyes. “Dorian, if you’d rather no one said anything…”

Dorian shook his head. “No, everyone is entitled to gossip, especially about a topic as interesting as me. Can hardly blame them. So, the story is that my…well. I prefer the company of men, and my father didn’t approve, and he tried to…there is a reason, unfortunately, why I am so averse to blood magic.”

Cullen stayed frozen in stunned silence. He had known, on some level, that Dorian’s flirting was not entirely playful, and he had never minded. But for a father to attempt blood magic on his child, and for something so foolish as who he sleeps with? Who he loves? A hard knot of rage twisted at the base of his throat, too hot to speak past. Dorian did not need any prompting, fortunately – now that he had started talking, he seemed too nervous to stop.

“Still, I’m glad I went to speak with him, and glad the Inquisitor convinced me to hear him out. I think we made progress, such as it is. He apologized, and it…is a start. So: to set your mind at ease, I dearly hope the flirting never made you uncomfortable, and you have my word it will cease from here on out. I hope…I hope we may continue our games, however. When this all blows over.”

Cullen sat up, scrubbing a hand through his hair to try and offset his headache. “Give me a moment,” he said. “I am very tired and don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t need to – ”

“No, listen. I have a lot of things I want to say, and I can’t think of the best order to say them in, so forgive me if this is a bit indelicate. But first, I suppose, is that I’m sorry I made you feel that you had to apologize for the flirting. If I minded, I would have said. I’m not letting you escape the embarrassment of my constant victory so easily, either. But it was a nice try.”

Dorian’s smile in the gentle mage-light was cautious. “Please. Your victories are two-to-one at best.”

“Also, I need you back on the training grounds tomorrow. Vivienne is better than you, but she also makes me nervous. Not to mention that half the recruits are too scared of her to actually attack her properly.”

“Ah. Welcome home, Dorian, back to work. Relentless, you are.” The mirth drained from his face. “Although some of your soldiers won’t like what they hear, Commander. I don’t want my presence in your ranks to be…divisive.”

Cullen sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to hurt, breathed past the pain of that and the headache. “They’re soldiers, Dorian. I don’t care what they like or don’t. If anyone gives you trouble, you tell me.”

Dorian frowned at him. “Cullen. Are you alright?”

The Inquisitor scooted closer, put a warm hand on his face. “Headache?”

He dropped his hand, leaned into her touch. “I can endure it,” he said softly.

Dorian cleared his throat and began to step down. “I imagine that’s goodnight, then,” he said. “We can continue this discussion in the morning, if you like, but I’m…” He sighed then, looked away, debating. “You are both very important to me. As I told the Inquisitor, I have precious few friends. I am lucky beyond measure to know the both of you.”

“Dorian,” the Inquisitor said quickly, “you don’t have to go.”

“It’s goodnight, not goodbye. I’ll still be around in the morning, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“You’re welcome to stay. There’s room for you here, with us.”

He raised an eyebrow. He did it too casually for it to be honest. “Really, Inquisitor. I imagine the commander might disagree.”

He knew he could say no, with no hard feelings. It was what Dorian expected – to be ordered away, to be shut out. But Cullen knew something about how damaging it was to live your entire life as though you were broken, not good enough, not to be taken seriously. Back at Haven, he had overheard Dorian and the Inquisitor talking about Tevinter while he paid a visit to Adan, looking for something that would safely take the edge off the withdrawal. He should not have been eavesdropping, but they were standing right outside. Dorian had said that Tevinter had no reserve, not in war and not in love. What would it be like, to love wholeheartedly and have it be treated like a joke. Like a disease.

“All we’re offering is sleep. But you know,” he said, too tired to keep denying what he wanted, too tired to be cautious. “I had always hoped your flirting wasn’t entirely without cause.”

Dorian went very still. He didn’t look up, didn’t say anything for the longest time. When he did, it was with a tight-lipped smile that didn’t even get close to his eyes. “You’re joking, of course.”

“Maker’s breath. Come to bed or don’t. I can’t stay awake any longer.” He felt around for the blanket, held up the edge in a clear invitation that the Inquisitor instantly accepted, peeling off her beige uniform tunic and climbing in beside him.

In the faint mage-light, her bottle-green eyes were cloudy with the need to sleep. She quickly appropriated most of his pillow, wadding it up under her head. “You’re not intruding, Dorian. We can talk more in the morning. Come to bed.”

“But I…thought…”

“If you don’t want to stay,” Cullen said, lying back down, “can you leave the lights? I rather like them.” He was about to pass out mid-sentence. The edges of reality were slipping away, their conversation blurring in his head. “But I hope you stay. I want you to stay.”

Again, silence for a long moment. By the time he spoke, Cullen was already half-asleep. Dorian’s answer, when it came, was soft. “How can I say no, then?”

The Inquisitor shuffled sideways to claim more blankets, make more room for him. Unlike her, Dorian didn’t take anything off. But he slipped in beside her, let her wrap an arm around him, cradling his head to her heart as though she were sheltering him. Cullen reached over and draped an arm across them both, not holding exactly but wanting to keep contact. And after a tense moment, Dorian reached carefully back.

The last thing he heard before falling asleep was the gentle murmur of the Inquisitor. Her tone was reassuring, but the only word he could pick out was ‘nightmares’.

 

* * *

                   

Sometime in the night, Cullen woke to a feeling of unease and sat up.

The walls around him looked different, but it was dark and he couldn’t tell why that would be. He put his hand out for the Inquisitor, and the bed was empty. His skin crawled. There was no gap in the wall, no patch of cold starlight looking down. Whole walls, a shelf of books. A breastplate leaning against the wall, glinting, cold, a sword emblazoned on it. A chill shot straight into the core of him, and he flung the covers back just as the Circle’s alarm bell sounded.

Someone stood at the foot of his bed.

Cullen froze. The figure shifted his head, jerky, unnatural.

“Not so tough on your own,” Uldred said, and Cullen reacted, reaching for the lyrium in his veins, reaching for something to lash out with. He grasped at nothing, finding an emptiness with a lurch like missing the last stair.

Uldred was already close, too close, arm’s reach, fingers twisting through the air towards Cullen’s face and he jerked away, throwing up a futile hand

and then

sitting up straight, gasping in the cold, muscles seizing, and the Inquisitor was beside him, murmuring, sleepy and reassuring, one hand resting warm and steady over his thundering heart.

He bowed forward, head in his hands. His body remembered his desperate reaching, and the empty place in his blood where the lyrium used to be was aching. The headache he’d had earlier was worse, now, and he groaned and rolled blindly out of bed, not quite sure where he was going yet but needing to go all the same.

Then a new voice startled him into momentary clarity.

“No, I’ll go with him,” Dorian said quietly. His Tevinter accent was stronger when he was tired, a thick burr that rumbled through the empty places in Cullen, that covered the gaps.

“I’m alright,” he said, but Dorian was already next to him. Not touching, not even reaching out, but there. Cullen wondered how much Dorian could guess about the content of his nightmare. He thought he might be able to guess the name that prickled in him like a swallowed needle, at least. So Cullen took the ladder and then the door and stood outside, safe under the stars where he had first kissed the Inquisitor, and Dorian followed him, yawning.

“I’ll be fine,” Cullen said, guilty. “You can go back to sleep if you like.”

“Nonsense.” Dorian rubbed his arms briskly. “No need to be alone after that.”

“I’m sorry,” Cullen said, leaning his forehead on the cold stone of the battlements.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Dorian said in return. “None of this is your fault.”

Cullen thought back to the conversation they’d had the night before about Dorian’s father, about the secret that had driven him from his homeland. He knew exactly why Dorian knew to offer those words. He had probably needed to hear them at some point as well.

So Cullen shifted sideways, leaned his weight against Dorian’s hip, and after a moment of frozen hesitation, Dorian’s hand came to rest lightly between Cullen’s shoulder blades. And it was alright. It was a kindness, a gentle weight. Not painful, not a closed fist, not a set of claws that sunk in when he tried to pull away. It was just Dorian – just him, standing guard over him because he could and because he wanted to. His thumb moved in slow sweeps, back and forth, back and forth.

So Cullen stood up, turned, leaned back but bent forward so that his weight rested against the battlement but his head rested against Dorian’s chest. And Dorian’s arms came up around him wordlessly, warm and protective and comforting and with barely any hesitation at all.

“I’m glad you stayed,” Cullen said.

For a long time, Dorian said nothing. He settled Cullen a bit more comfortably against him, rested his chin on the top of his head. “And I’m glad I left,” he said at last. “There is no you in Tevinter.”

Despite how cold it was, Cullen felt a pleasant warmth flush into his face. “Me too,” he said. “I mean, I’m glad…not to say that you’re – you’re not wrong.” His face got hotter. “That was embarrassing. You know what I meant.”

“Rendered speechless by my wit and charm, are you? I’ll take it as a compliment.”

Cullen laughed, feeling the last of the nightmare leave him as he did. “Feel free. But I think it’s time we went back to bed.”

Dorian let him go and Cullen led the way back upstairs. The Inquisitor was awake and waiting for them, and she held her arms out for Cullen when he crawled back under the blankets. But this time, Dorian crept in on his side. Resting safely between them, Cullen didn’t worry about the nightmares returning, didn’t worry about the blue that burned behind his eyelids. Didn’t worry at all. With Dorian’s arm around his waist and the Inquisitor’s head on his chest, he slipped back into sleep easily and didn’t wake again until morning.

 

* * *

 

When he awoke, Dorian was gone. Cullen felt his absence like a punch to the chest. Maybe it was the nightmare that had scared him off, maybe it was the conversation they’d had, maybe it was too much too soon…maybe it was the way he’d stumbled on his words and made a fool of himself.

The Inquisitor stirred as he began to move, stretched lazily like a cat, then curled back into him, and he took advantage of her shuffling to slip out from under her. With the bed to herself, she stretched out until she was covering most of its surface and sighed contentedly.

He smiled despite himself, tucked the blanket back around her, and made his way down the ladder.

At the bottom, however, he was startled to find Dorian sitting in his chair, reading.

“About time,” he said amiably, snapping his book closed. “Would you like to get breakfast?”

Cullen couldn’t have held back his smile if he’d wanted to. And just like that, the rhythm of his days shifted: where before he had divided his time between the Inquisitor and his duties as commander, he now found time for his job, for Dorian, for the Inquisitor, and for the three of them together, whenever they could manage it. The latter was easy. Dorian spent nights with them, whether in Cullen’s quarters or the Inquisitor’s. On those mornings, she had food brought up for breakfast and the three of them ate in bed, shoulder to shoulder, balcony doors thrown open to let the air and the light in.

Dorian continued to show up in his office, sometimes with food and sometimes just to check in or borrow a book. He quickly became such a fixture in Cullen’s office that his soldiers stopped waiting for permission to speak in front of him.

If anyone knew about the arrangement the three of them had, no one said anything. Dorian was circumspect about it, but not as cautious as he might have been if the Inquisitor wasn’t involved. There was nothing clandestine about two men being in love with the same woman, after all – unusual that they weren’t fighting over it, perhaps, but understandable, and no one had to know that the reality of the situation was any different. Whatever the rest of the Inquisition thought about it, no one raised any objections.

Leliana had to know, of course. Josephine smiled slyly at the three of them one evening as Dorian met them outside the war room, and something about it made Cullen suspect that she knew as well. Neither of them ever breathed a word about it, at least as far as Cullen could tell. He recognized that he felt defensive about it, that he was watching carefully for a sign of disapproval because he was determined to kill it before it grew teeth. Whatever this was, whatever they were building between the three of them, it mattered.

Some nights, when the Inquisitor was out in the world somewhere and Dorian and Cullen had time to themselves, they stayed in her room anyway. Dorian liked to read, and Cullen liked to rest on his stomach with his arms around Dorian’s waist, bracketed by his knees. Sometimes, Dorian rested his book on Cullen’s head. Sometimes, he would put the book down and drag heavy fingers across Cullen’s scalp, and sometimes his fingers skimmed over Cullen’s jaw with a hunger he was starting to recognize, and which he always answered by heaving himself up and over Dorian’s leg and turning away.

Cullen had told him about the lyrium, but had never explained the other half of the reason why he tensed whenever Dorian slid too close, whenever his hand strayed too far. Dorian must have thought it was because he was a mage; he knew Cullen had a history with the unkindness of magical hands, and he wasn’t entirely wrong. But every time Cullen tried to explain further, he let fear stop him – the old fear of not being enough, of not giving enough. Of being broken, somehow, of not wanting what he should. He was afraid of laying the worst parts of himself bare for Dorian to see and watching him walk away when he decided it wasn’t good enough.

It was a conversation they had to have. It was only fair to tell him. But it could wait, Cullen told himself – just one more day. Just one more. Just one more.

Dorian never took offense whenever Cullen pulled away. In a small, selfish way, he hoped the Inquisitor had already told him some of it. Just enough to let Dorian know that it wasn’t his fault. Just enough to let him know that Cullen hated flinching from him, hated how deep the fear went. Just enough to thank him for waiting even when waiting was clearly the last thing he wanted to do.

In the meantime, they kept playing chess. Cullen only let him win once in a while, and Dorian always called him on it. They kept sharing a bed, sharing warmth in the night, waking together from one of Cullen’s nightmares or waking together when the sun crept up over the mountains.

Dorian kept showing up to help train their recruits. He was happier than he had been at the start, more comfortable. Some of the recruits spoke to him, laughed with him when he helped pick them up out of the dirt. Some never even looked in his direction. Centuries of fearing both mages and Tevinter was hard to overcome, and the part that bothered Cullen the most about this reaction is that it was the one Dorian seemed to expect.

There was nothing he could do to change that. Nothing except show Dorian in every way he could that they were wrong.

So Cullen started making an effort to seek him out, to go to the tavern for a drink together, to bring him books and debate the merits of Genitivi or the Maleficarum Imperio, to sit with him and Solas as they compared magical technique or as he and Cassandra and Varric talked about Varric’s books. And he asked him questions – about Tevinter, about growing up, about his family and his life and his past loves. Dorian brushed some of his questions off with a joke, but most of the time he was only too happy to talk about himself. It was a start. It was something.

When the Inquisitor returned from one of her trips, Dorian always made himself scarce for a few days. Cullen understood that he was giving them space, giving them time to be together the way he and Cullen had been together. It was a balance they all had to consciously maintain, to safeguard. It took work. But it was worth it, even when Cullen woke because Dorian had wrapped himself up in the blankets and the Inquisitor was pressed to his side and he was left freezing, even when the kitchen servants only sent up two butter rolls and they had to tear them into equal portions, even when two of them were bickering and the third was forced to be a tiebreaker. It didn’t always make sense. It wasn’t easier. But when Cullen looked back on the man he had been when Cassandra found him, when she’d recruited him for the Inquisition, freshly severed from his lyrium leash and twisted up from witnessing his second destroyed Circle…that man was one he barely recognized. The Inquisition had saved him, surely, had given him purpose. But any happiness he had now was hard-earned, and it was these two who had helped give him the strength to fight for it.

So he would fight for them, too, in every way that he knew how.

And, for a short, golden time, everything was perfect.

 

* * *

            

The Inquisitor had gone back to the Hinterlands, had been gone for ten days. Cullen stood in the sun with his troops in the training grounds, unencumbered for once, having shed his armour to ward off the worst of the heat. For the last few days, the lyrium had been in his thoughts more than usual, had been scraping at him like fingernails on his bones. He’d kept it from Dorian not out of a desire to hide it, but simply because some days were worse than others, and there wasn’t always a reason why.

Of course, he had also realized that sometimes there was a reason. Heat was one – sometimes even a bowl of soup that was too hot could send him gasping from the room. Another was proximity to magic, or really to a threat of any kind that made him wish he still had his Templar abilities. Self-doubt was a part of that, too, could send him sliding as quickly as fear. Fatigue or illness, anything that weakened him mentally, was difficult, and dangerous when combined with his tendency to have nightmares. And the withdrawal, naturally, made the nightmares worse.

It was just part of his day, by this point. There wasn’t a point to complaining about it every time his thoughts turned blue at the edges.

Still, Dorian had been a little strange the past few days, a little cautious. Even now, he stood on the sidelines and watched instead of volunteering for duels, claiming that it was too hot to be working. If Dorian knew he was struggling more than usual, he hadn’t said anything. But then, Cullen suspected that he wouldn’t.

Even with the heat, even with the clash of blunted practice swords, he would have been fine. Not great, but fine. He paced the line and corrected form and offered pointers on technique, taught strategy and gave out drills to practice for reaction time and precision. And it was nothing – a single misstep, a recruit who dragged a heel on a reposition, and he lashed out to try and recover his balance.

Unfortunately, Cullen was behind him, looking the other way, and the man’s flailing sword cracked down directly on Cullen’s shoulder.

The swords weren’t sharp. It would bruise, nothing more. If he’d seen it coming, it might have been different. As it was, his whole body kicked instinctively into a state of alertness, and the lyrium came with it, undeniable as the tide. He felt it crawling up his spine like electricity, like he was suddenly full of needles, like a sea yawning open in the back of his skull. They couldn’t know. He couldn’t let them see. It would be a weakness that he would never recover from.

“Mind your feet. In a real fight, a stumble means that you die,” he said, trying to keep the panic from his voice as he turned away, barely holding it together. “Rylen, get these soldiers back in line.”

Rylen started barking orders, trying to turn their eyes back to each other, but their concern followed him all the same as he hopped the fence around the ring and headed straight for his office. He could barely see straight; the world was tilting, and he was sliding down the slope of it, scrabbling for purchase and losing, one foot in front of the other, lyrium in a box on his shelf behind the books, so close now, so close. The prickling under his skin drove him on, an agony he couldn’t scratch out, didn’t even want to touch but couldn’t escape. His hands were shaking, he knew that. Knew it but couldn’t stop them, and he was sweating, burning, so close now, could see his door, and then someone’s hand caught him under the arm just as he started to stumble.

“Come on then, Commander,” Dorian said grimly. He waved reassuringly in the direction of the yard. “Let’s get you out of the sun.”

Cullen couldn’t speak, forced down a wave of nausea that sprung up at the thought of somehow forming words. His vision was going black at the corners, and someone was opening the door and closing it behind them, and then he was on the floor, cheek pressed to cold stone and he was gasping with relief as it bled some of the heat from his face. The craving roared in him like a world of teeth, so loud he barely heard Dorian, voice high and panicked now that they were out of sight.

“Cullen! I’m here. Look, I’m here.” Dorian reached out, grabbed him by the wrist. “Tell me how to help you, what do you need?” The room was spinning around him, but Cullen opened his eyes. So much worry on Dorian’s face, so much fear. He felt guilty. Shouldn’t be hurting him, should never hurt him.

“Sorry,” he said, but it wasn’t what he meant to say, Dorian had asked him a question. Couldn’t remember.

“You’re burning up, my darling. Listen. We have to cool you down. Cullen. Do you trust me? If I use magic, will it make it worse?

Dorian’s hands were on his face, cradling, focusing. Cullen reached up, managed to find a fistful of Dorian’s shirt, and held on as a fresh wave of pain rolled through him, fire in the veins, fire in the lungs. He screamed but tried to hold it in, body bucking and twisting, holding on to Dorian, unable to find the Maker’s name through the shock of it but holding on, holding on.

After a lifetime, it broke enough for him to gasp in a breath, let his cramped muscles start to relax, and he realized that he was being held. Dorian had pulled him up onto his lap and was bent over him, fierce concentration on his face. Cullen had never seen him so pale. The pain was slow to return, and he realized that he could see his breath in front of him, pluming out in short, jagged rasps. Magic sizzled in the air, a sharp tang on the back of his tongue. Dorian’s hands were over his chest and over his abdomen, cold rolling off him in a steady, gentle outpouring that was altering the entire room; around them, the room was limned in ice. When Cullen tried to open his eyes further, his eyelashes were frozen together.

“Dorian,” he said, or tried to. His throat was raw. The mage’s eyes snapped away from his task, and the magic bled into nothing at his fingertips.

“You’re alive,” he said faintly. “Maker preserve us. I didn’t think…” He put his hands on Cullen’s face and leaned in until their foreheads were touching. “You should have told me,” he said. “I could have helped, I could have…done research, something. Could have been here.”

“You are here.”

Dorian pulled back, pressed his lips to Cullen’s forehead, less a kiss than a gentle admonishment. “Stubborn man. You’re not alone any longer.”

Cullen sat up, stiff and sore but otherwise alright. He rubbed his neck, took a moment to breathe with Dorian’s steadying hand on his shoulder, on his knee. “I’m okay,” he said. The dull blue pulsing hadn’t quite bled out of his veins yet, and he was still tired and wrung out and achy, but he wasn’t burning up anymore, wasn’t dizzy or anything else: just aching. His shoulder throbbed where the bruise was building. Against what had come before, it was almost refreshing.

There was a shuffling sound outside one of the side doors, then a crunch as someone tried to push the iced-over door open. “Commander?” they shouted. “Don’t worry, sir, we’re coming!”

“Maker’s breath,” Cullen grumbled. “What now? Here, help me – ”

Dorian stiffly stood, pulling Cullen up with him. He couldn’t help but notice that the ice hadn’t touched the bookshelves, but had frozen the doors solid. Beside him, Dorian shivered and put his hands out, staff held perfectly level behind him, and then swept them up. Cullen felt the pinch-twist of magic as fire ruptured from thin air and didn’t flinch from it, didn’t quite manage to take his eyes off Dorian as he worked, until the shouting from outside distracted him.

“Listen here, mage! You can’t hide! If you’ve harmed the commander – ” They still hammered at the door, voice muffled but clear enough. Cullen glanced over at Dorian as the ice melted away, somehow without leaving puddles of water on the floor.

Dorian shrugged in resignation, looked away as though he was embarrassed. Cullen gathered his anger like a hot coal held in the back of his throat, strode to the door, and yanked it open with a vicious crunch as the last of the ice gave way.

The recruit outside jumped, then snapped to attention. “Glad to see you alright, sir!” Behind him, three Templars stood in wary readiness, armour on. Cullen felt his face go flat as stone.

“You are dismissed,” he said coldly, and the three of them sketched hasty salutes and hurried away. The recruit, to his credit, remained at attention. Cullen waited, let the sounds of the retreating Templars fade entirely before he turned the full force of his stare on his soldier. The man swallowed visibly. “Explain to me,” he said slowly, “why you are standing outside my door, threatening a man who is not only our sole ally from Tevinter, but also a member of the Inquisitor’s inner circle.”

The recruit was sweating. Cullen hadn’t thought it was possible for him to stand any straighter. “Sir! You were ill, and the mage locked both of you in the room, sir! We couldn’t get in, and nobody answered our inquiries. We feared the worst, sir.”

“Who is ‘we’, recruit?”

The man had the good sense to look a bit sheepish. “Well…just me, sir. I was the only one around. When no one answered, I ran for the Templars. Didn’t think I could waste a moment, sir.”

“It never occurred to you that complex magic requires uninterrupted focus, and that your interruptions could have harmed me as much as the magic you fear?”

“N-n-no, sir, I only – ”

“Enough.”

The man stood at full attention as Cullen tried to decide what to do. “Dorian,” he said loudly after a moment. “The recruit would like to apologize.”

Dorian crossed the room, came to stand beside him, three books in his hand. “I’m borrowing these,” he said casually, as though he hadn’t been affected at all by the exchange at the door. “Yes, who’s this?”

The recruit snapped a smart salute. His decorum, at least, was praiseworthy. “Begging your pardon, sir. I never meant to imply that you are anything but a valued member of the Inquisition. My actions were disrespectful, and I accept any punishment you deem suitable.”

“Sweet Andraste. How dramatic.” He turned to Cullen. “The lad only wanted to ensure your safety. You might consider his motivations along with his actions. I, for one, am already bored of this entire proceeding.” Then he leaned over and kissed Cullen’s cheek, so quickly it almost hadn’t happened at all. “Thank you for the books. I’ll see you later.”

Cullen watched him go, warm from his cheek down to his boots, somewhat stunned. When he looked back over at the recruit, the man’s face was entirely red. “Sir, I didn’t know.”

“Very few do,” he sighed. “I’m hoping it will remain that way for a little while yet. I can’t order you not to speak of it, but I hope you won’t.”

“No, sir.”

“Back to your duties, then.”

“Oh! I was to deliver a message, sir. That’s why – ” He broke off, cleared his throat. “Our scouts report that the Inquisitor’s party was sighted earlier this morning. They are not pursued, but appear to be injured. A small party was dispatched immediately to bring them in safely.”

Cullen’s gut clenched. “The Inquisitor?”

“Injured, but alive, sir.”

“Thank you. That will be all.”

The man saluted and made a hasty retreat, but Cullen had already almost forgotten about him. He stared out towards the main gate, knowing he could do nothing now but wait. Instead of trying to get back to work, he closed the door to his tower behind him and went after Dorian.

Evening had almost fallen by the time the Inquisitor’s party made it home. In the murky half-light of twilight, Cullen and Dorian waited side by side, along with Blackwall and Solas and Cassandra and the rest, torches burning as the first of them began to appear: Vivienne in the lead on her imposing Amaranthine Charger, blood-spattered and very nearly slouching. Two Inquisition foot soldiers trailed after her, each leading a mount; they resolved in the dim light into the Iron Bull’s war-painted Avvar draft and the Inquisitor’s white Royal Sixteen. Cullen found himself walking forward, even though the saddles of both were clearly empty. Vivienne’s dismount was clumsy, but she waved her hand impatiently to dismiss the healers who flocked to her and turned, with the rest of them, to watch the rest of the party arrive.

A few wagons crowded in, piled high with supplies, then Sera on her All-Bred, bandages wrapped around her torso and bow slung off the saddle instead of at her back. She was holding her side, but waved at them as she let the healers pull her off her horse and cart her off to the infirmary. “She’s right behind me,” she called to them. “Don’t be so grim, yeah? We’re like bloody heroes. All the blood, see?”

Then the Iron Bull walked in through the gate with the Inquisitor in his arms, and he was grinning and so was she, grinning and covered in blood and marching triumphantly, and Cullen thought his heart was going to thunder its way out of his chest with relief.

The Iron Bull marched straight over to them, ignoring the healers who rushed to help. “You’re not going to believe what we did. Tell them! Go on, boss – ”

Even though she was being carried, the Inquisitor was almost vibrating with excitement. “You’re going to be so mad. And I know this is a lot of blood haha but listen, we fought a high dragon! And nobody died!”

She held her hands out as though expecting them to share in her enthusiasm, but Cullen and Dorian both stood in abject horror and said nothing.

“Boss, I gotta tell you – these two don’t react to things properly.”

“It was incredible! She flew up like _whoosh_ and shot fire at us! From the sky! And then Vivienne got up in her face with her barriers up, it was so amazing – ”

“The highlight of our adventuring, I’m sure.” The sarcasm in Vivienne’s voice was so lethal Cullen cringed, and she finally headed back to her quarters.

The Inquisitor, undaunted, was still gesticulating wildly as a pair of healers gingerly peeled away the bandages on her leg. “And then we realized that if we injured one of her legs she would kind of hop around, and before she could breathe fire at us Bull grabbed Sera and – ”

“Shit, yeah! She was not happy with me about that one, though.”

“ – and threw her up onto the dragon’s back, and she was screaming absolute bloody murder but loaded two arrows and fired them into the back of her neck from zero range and we finally got her! That’s when her tail, you know, thrashed out super hard and I went flying. And I broke three fingers and maybe my leg? From fighting a dragon, though!”

“Shit, yeah!” said the Iron Bull, louder this time, and he and the Inquisitor grinned and triumphantly headbutted each other.

Silence descended. Cullen looked helplessly from the Inquisitor to Dorian to the Iron Bull to the healers. Finally, Dorian said, “I knew the qunari would be a bad influence.”

“Hey, she’s the one who wanted to go for it. I just supported her decision.”

Before she could add anything more, the healers prodded something on her leg that made her hiss in pain. “You were right. Fractured at the least,” one of them said. “We should try to move you as little as possible. Straight up to your quarters, then. We’ll set it there.”

For the first time since her arrival, she looked embarrassed. “Of course.” She held her hands out, awkwardly, to the both of them. Cullen felt the Iron Bull’s eyes on them, interpreting, cataloguing, and didn’t care. “Come with me?” she said softly, and Dorian laughed, took her hand carefully as Cullen did the same, minding her broken fingers.

“My dear Inquisitor, I doubt you could stop us.”

Cullen looked up at Bull. “We can take her, if you’re too tired.”

“Not a chance,” he said. “I’ve got a big old gash and she’s helping to hold my guts in.”

Cullen and Dorian both recoiled. “Maker!”

“That’s simply – ”

He laughed loudly enough to silence them. “I was joking. Come on. If I had a wound like that I’d be showing it off. Gets you plenty of attention, if you know what I mean. Seriously though, I’ve got her.”

She dropped their hands as Bull strode off towards the keep and they followed, along with healers and messengers and Leliana’s agents. One of the healers split off and rushed towards the infirmary.

In her quarters, the remaining healer directed Cullen into helping prepare the area: they rolled up the area rug and shoved it off to the side, leaving the flagstones bare. The other healers came crowding up moments later, arms full of supplies. They put down a pallet and clean linens, bowls of clean water, rags and bandages and poultices. Bull, at last, set her down as gently as he could and departed, bearing injuries of his own but more or less determined to laugh them off.

“All right,” said the senior healer, tying back her sleeves. “Fingers first, your worship. Then we’ll get you out of those bloody clothes and set the leg. Then, if you can bear it, we’ll clean up your other injuries.”

“Can we not use magic for this?”

The healer glared sternly down at her. “Potions can close a wound, but not set a bone. Magic can do neither, not since the breach. Such spells have been corrupted. Your body must do this work for itself.”

“Yes, healer,” the Inquisitor said meekly.

“Are these two staying?” The healer raised her eyebrows at Dorian and Cullen, both of whom had so far been standing off to the side, out of the way.

“I might excuse myself,” Dorian said quickly. “I’m sorry, Inquisitor. I cannot bear to watch this. Not the blood, but the bone. I thought I could, but…”

“It’s alright,” Cullen said. “I’ll be here with her.”

She stared up at the pair of them imploringly, fear at the edges, just creeping in. “Will you come back? After?”

“Of course I will,” Dorian said, face twisting, going to her and crouching to tenderly smooth her hair back from her face. Then he looked up at the assembled healers, at Cullen. “I will be in the main hall. If you need me, if…if I can help, somehow, come and fetch me.”

Cullen shrugged out of his cloak, then his armour, as Dorian rose and took the stairs. He knelt beside the Inquisitor, held one hand still while the healer knelt on her other side, examined the two breaks, and adjusted her grip. The Inquisitor stared up at Cullen, didn’t look away as the healer explained the process to her. He bent and pressed a kiss to her lips, then her forehead, trying to look calm even though he dreaded this.

“Alright, your worship, deep breaths now. We’re going to fix this index here, first, and then we – ” A sickening crunch and the Inquisitor let out a scream like a punch, a sharp, abbreviated sound. “There we are, first one done! Now the splint, alright? Deep breaths. Sorry to spring it on you, but it’s easier if you’re not expecting it.”

“Ha. Easy. Let’s have the next,” said the Inquisitor in a strained voice. Cullen sat with her, held her gaze as she gasped and mastered herself and steeled herself for the next. He had always admired this grim, resolute defiance, ever since he had first seen it at Haven.

“Deep breaths, your worship,” said the healer, having repositioned her hands.

She looked at Cullen and nowhere else. “It’s fine,” she said. “I can endure it.”

 

* * *

 

When it was done, the Inquisitor was scrubbed clean, heavily bandaged, and largely immobile. The leg was the worst of the damage; the bloodiest wound had been across the front of her shoulder, and looked worse than it was. The healer had packed it with some kind of herb and clean linen, and fixed the smaller scrapes with hot water. Mostly, there were bruises. Cullen helped the healers lift her into her bed and get her settled, propping pillows on either side of her splinted leg so that she couldn’t move it around in her sleep. Then they packed up their supplies, gave her a potion to help her sleep and Cullen instructions on how to care for her, and retreated.

“That was a bit worse than I was expecting,” she said drowsily, blankets pulled up under her arms so that her damaged hands rested on top of the covers.

Cullen sat on the edge of her bed. “If this keeps you from picking fights with more dragons, then I’m glad.” He froze, realizing what he’d said. “Not that I’m glad you were injured. I was trying to say you shouldn’t be fighting dragons, and…oh, never mind.”

Her eyes went wide. “I’m absolutely going to fight more dragons,” she said in a revelatory, dramatic whisper.

“I know you are,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. He paused as he heard footsteps on the stairs, and Dorian appeared a moment later.

“I saw the healers leaving. How is she?”

She held up her hands, fingers bound together on both sides. “No more broken fingers,” she said cheerfully, and Cullen shook his head.

“That, of course, is not at all accurate. The healers want to wait a few days before administering potions, to make sure everything sets properly. Until then, our dear Inquisitor is confined to her bed.”

“Stay with me,” she said as Dorian walked over.

“You keep saying that,” Dorian said, “as though we would do anything else. Are you hungry? I can go find you something.”

“Yessssss.” Her eyes drifted closed; by the time she fell silent, she was already asleep.

Cullen smiled, brushed her hair away from her face as Dorian sat down on her other side.

“How did it go?”

“I think she’ll be just fine. Might be cranky for the next few days.”

“Ah, yes. She’s terrible when she’s bored. You should see her on the trek down the mountain sometimes – once, I caught her trying to stand on her hart’s back as it walked. On a calmer animal, it might have worked.”

“But…?”

“It bucked her off into a snowbank, arse over teakettle. And she was _delighted_.” Dorian cupped his hands together, blew into them, left the ember lights hanging in the air as he rose to put out the lights, close the balcony doors. “She made me promise not to tell you about that. Ask Cassandra, sometime – she’s been sworn to secrecy a couple times, too.”

Cullen looked down at the Inquisitor, exasperated and utterly unsurprised.

“What about you, Cullen? Are you feeling any better?”

“Just tired.”

“Well, alright.” Dorian said, and crawled into bed beside her, careful not to jostle her as he did so. He yawned, huge and catlike.

On her other side, Cullen did the same. They curved around her like brackets, framing and protecting and present, and the two of them followed her, one by one, into sleep.

 

* * *

 

Sometime in the earliest hours of the morning, Cullen woke with a thundering heart, sweating and shaking off the last clinging remnants of his nightmare. He rolled himself out from under the covers as gingerly as he could. The Inquisitor was still asleep, held deeply by the sleeping draught she had been given, but Dorian had awoken and was watching quietly as Cullen waved his concern away and strode out onto the balcony.

With the cold air on his skin, it was easier to forget the taste of lyrium that still lingered on his tongue, the rush of it, blazing bright and pure and powerful in his veins. His dreams had been vengeful, lately. Full of blood that wasn’t his. Full of screams that weren’t his, either. He had known for a long time that loss would drive him back to the lyrium more surely than the craving for it; in his nightmares, it was no longer his fellow Templars that he watched from inside the demon’s cage: it was Dorian who bled, the Inquisitor who screamed, and Cullen who took up the philter to exact his terrible vengeance. He was disturbed by how easily his love overtook him, of how quickly it justified violence. Of how quickly he became worse than the demons that had tortured him, all those years ago, and how satisfying it was to carve his pain out of them, blood for blood.

He had always known violence; that is what Templars were designed for. But it was his job to threaten violence, not enjoy it. He had never been particularly vindictive. Not until now. Not until his dreams had given him a reason to be.

Even this subconscious capacity for vengeance scared him more than the blood did, now. He was starting to understand why people would do terrifying things for love. And still, he would not give it up. If this was love, if this was the cost…he would pay it, again and again.

His breath fogged out in front of him, the cold reaching into his clothes and drying the sweat on his skin, and the moon hung bright and almost full above the mountains, and he was alright. Not better, not free. But alright. He stayed until he began to shiver. When he went back inside, he left the balcony doors open.

Dorian was still awake. A pair of glowing embers hung above his head, not even enough to cast shadows, but his eyes caught the light as Cullen approached. Dorian reached out, and Cullen went to his knees beside the bed, burying his face in Dorian’s neck as he pulled him close. Then, with the moonlight bleeding in and the embers glowing above them, Cullen pulled back and kissed him – gently, but firmly, skimming his thumb along Dorian’s jaw to revel in the way the muscles moved when Dorian kissed him back.

They broke apart, and it was darker than it had been: the embers had gone out. Dorian laughed, a whispering sound. “Now look what you’ve done,” he murmured. “Distracting me like that.”

“Maker forgive me,” Cullen whispered back. “Not the magic lights!”

“If we try that again, we might be able to trick them into coming back…”

“Sounds risky.” But Cullen still kissed him once more, slow and savouring, before he stood, circled around and climbed carefully back into bed on the Inquisitor’s far side. Dorian reached for him immediately, splaying his fingers across Cullen’s ribcage, under his shirt.

“You’re so dull,” Dorian mumbled as they both got settled again. He yawned, crushing his face into the gap between his pillow and the Inquisitor’s shoulder. “I can’t believe how much I hate you.”

Cullen slipped his hand into one of the Inquisitor’s broken ones where it rested on her stomach, careful not to touch her fingers. “I love you too, you know.”

Dorian scoffed. “Why wouldn’t you?” he said drowsily. “You _have_ met me.” But his fingers squeezed just a little tighter on Cullen’s side, and he didn’t let go.

 

* * *

 

Cullen stayed at the Inquisitor’s side as often as he could, which was not as often as he would have liked. His duties kept him confined to his maps and charts and desk for much of the day. Still, he found gaps which worked well enough, when he would stride from his tower across the balustrade, past Solas, then Varric, then the throne, taking the stairs two at a time, arriving breathless but calm. Half the time, she was asleep. When she wasn’t, her smile lit him up like a sunburst within his chest.

More than once, she had other visitors: Varric, telling stories, who didn’t let Cullen’s appearance slow him down; Cole, who sat on the bed beside her and traced the veins on her hand with one pale finger as he calmly delivered the thoughts of the kitchen staff in a soothing monotone; Cassandra, who read to her from a book that looked suspiciously like something Varric could have written, and who turned red and left as soon as he showed up, much to the Inquisitor’s amusement; and Dorian.

“Oh, did you miss us?” Dorian said, the first time Cullen turned up. He was sitting in a chair next to her bed, and they were both picking at a tray of food between them.

“More than you know.” Cullen dropped a kiss on the top of Dorian’s head, then stretched himself out on the bed, angling his legs off the bed so that he could rest his head on the Inquisitor’s abdomen. She set down her handful of grapes and ran her fingers through his hair. Her splinted fingers were clumsy, but she was careful. “Leliana is in a temper today, and I haven’t the energy to stand up to her. I think I might have agreed to give her half a battalion for…training. Of some kind.”

The Inquisitor hummed sympathetically. “Sounds like you didn’t sleep well.”

Cullen grunted an agreement, letting his eyes slip closed.

“You should have woken me,” she said, and he could hear the frown in her voice.

“I was with him,” Dorian said. “It was just a nightmare. Made him very affectionate, whatever it was.”

“Then you _definitely_ should have woken me,” she griped, and Cullen smiled, knowing he would have to leave soon, would have to go sort out whatever he’d agreed with Leliana, but not yet. Not just yet. Above him, the Inquisitor sighed. “Thank you, Dorian. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Someone has to be. You both require so much looking after.”

“I mean it. I’m glad you stayed, when we asked after Redcliffe. I’m glad you’re here, with us.”

“Oh, not you too. It’s troubling to have people fawning over me so openly. Understandable, of course, but it’s not how things are done back home – in Tevinter it’s not a romance without veiled threats and insults and furious kissing in dark corners. We do love a bit of drama.”

“Well, you and I don’t have a romance,” the Inquisitor said.

“But I think we do,” said Cullen, cracking his eyes open enough to see Dorian studiously not looking at him.

The Inquisitor’s fingers went still in his hair. “What?”

“Fasta vass,” said Dorian. “I knew you would hold that against me.”

“Last night, Dorian told me that I was very dull, and that he hated me.”

“Both of those things are currently true.”

“And?”

“And you started it.”

“Oh, Maker,” the Inquisitor sighed. “It’s about time.”

Cullen grinned with his eyes still closed, with the Inquisitor’s broken fingers carding carefully through his tangled hair, and let Dorian tell her the story of their last few days: of his injury, of the withdrawal it had caused, of Dorian’s rescue and the soldier’s suspicion, of how they waited together for her to be brought home. Of waking, last night, and falling back asleep, and what had happened in between.

Just as Dorian was finishing his story – while Cullen realized he was in very serious danger of falling asleep right then and there – he was interrupted by a faint knocking. Then the door creaked gently as it opened, and a woman’s voice called cautiously up.

“Come in!” called the Inquisitor, and one of Cullen’s soldiers poked her head over the railing. She stared pointedly at the stained glass windows instead of in their direction.

“Beggin’ your pardon, your worship. I was told…hm. I had to come find the Commander, ser, but I can’t recall why.”

The Inquisitor sighed in fond exasperation. “Thank you. We’ll take care of it.”

The soldier saluted the windows, then hastily retreated, easing the door shut almost soundlessly.

“What a production,” Cullen said as he wearily sat up and scrubbed at his face. “You’d think we were all lying here Maker naked.”

“In any other case, we might be,” said the Inquisitor playfully. “Come here, let me fix your hair.”

Cullen leaned back so she could rearrange his mess of curls into something resembling order, not quite sure how to take that comment. It was an odd thing to say. Was she hinting that she wanted more from him? Was she making a joke about him? He knew he was overthinking: his relationship with the Inquisitor was well-defined, agreed upon. He knew how she felt about him…but her words wouldn’t sit right.

“I had better go see to our ghost boy,” he said, pulling away from her. He stood, didn’t look back, but rubbed the back of his neck as he left, already feeling poorly about the manner of his exit.

When he opened the door to the top floor of the tavern, Cole was standing quietly in his corner just as he usually was.

Cole turned his watery eyes on him, and Cullen felt a shiver on the back of his neck. He wasn’t afraid of Cole, but he was still a spirit and there was something non-human about his eyes – like looking into a mirror that you’re holding underwater. He wasn’t afraid of Cole, but he was afraid of the memories that Cole’s eyes woke in him, memories of a different kind of barrier separating him from a different kind of spirit.

“The demon didn’t know,” Cole said by way of greeting. “It kept you the longest because it asked, and you said no. It didn’t know that anyone could say no.”

Cullen’s heart beat in triplicate, an uneasy hammering. “Enough, Cole. You wanted to see me.”

“Not me.” Cole hummed, shifted his weight back and forth. His voice changed, dropped the cautious tone that seemed to mark his own thoughts. “Banners flying in Qarinus the last time I turned from it, already homesick. Ashamed to share blood with the man who would use it against me. Never so scared, never so angry. The lions are gentler here, but do they taste any different? I want his hands on me. Grasping, gasping, strength in his fingers, enough to bruise. Afraid to ask, afraid of losing, looking, lying to live. Somewhere in the world, the blood waits, wanting.”

Cole subsided into silence after delivering his message, swiveling his glassy eyes towards the ceiling as though listening to something far away.

Cullen didn’t think he had ever had fewer thoughts in his head. None that he could pick up and string into a sentence, at any rate; with no idea what to say, he simply began to walk away.

“He is sorry,” Cole called after him, and that made Cullen stop and turn back.

“Why?”

“He sees you hurting. He thinks he makes it worse. But he wants you to know, too. He is very confused, and very sad.”

Cullen shook his head, and, slowly, gathered himself up and walked away.

 

* * *

          

He couldn’t go back to them immediately, even though he should have after hearing what Cole had to say. None of that had been a mystery, really – he’d known for some time that Dorian wanted him, wanted the parts of him that he wasn’t willing to offer. And that was fine, normal, expected; that’s the shape love usually took, after all.

There was a conversation they had to have, clearly. Cullen had known that too. He had put it off for too long, and now couldn’t think of a way to approach it. He had put it off too long, and that might have done more damage than he could repair.

So, without quite meaning to, he found himself sitting down across from Josephine at her desk.

If she was surprised, she didn't show it. She neatly stowed her quill, neatly folded her hands on the desk. “Commander?”

He stared at his own hands, at their rough knuckles, skin weathered by sun and sword. He thought of the Inquisitor’s marked hand, the one that would save them all, of Dorian’s callused palms. He had come here to ask how to start a conversation. He had come here for the ambassador, best of all of them at navigating relationships of every form, had come here hoping for the answer to a question he couldn’t frame.

He stared at his hands, and Josephine sighed.

“I would be honoured to assist you if – ”

“Am I worthy of them, Josie?” It was not what he’d meant to say. He couldn’t meet her gaze, couldn’t even look in her direction.

But she rose, composed as ever, and came around the desk to crouch in front of him. She covered his hands with one of her own.

“I do not know our Inquisitor as well as I would like,” she said. “But I know enough to say with confidence: she has never doubted for a moment that you are. And if the dreamy looks he gives you are any indication, neither has Dorian.”

Cullen raised her hand to his lips, wordless. She gave him a somewhat exasperated smile. “You are in love, Cullen. It is not supposed to be easy.”

“Would that it were,” he murmured.

“It is easier if you do not keep secrets. Go, have your conversation. You will feel better once you do.” She smiled and stood, brushing her hair back behind an ear.

Cullen stood with her. "That's not a conversation I know how to have."

"And yet you must have it," Josie said sweetly, and steered him gently to the door.

Cullen left Josephine's office to find the afternoon sun breaking in through the stained glass behind the Inquisitor’s throne. She had brought in the Orlesian throne for their upcoming trip to Halamshiral, and the golden wings with the sun behind them woke a yearning in Cullen, almost a hunger. He was reminded of Andraste, her outstretched hands. He was reminded of the swelling sound of hymns during morning prayer, of lifting his voice in a church of cold stone and bright glass, with the sun coming in just like this.

There was probably something sacrilegious in perceiving the holy in a mortal throne – even just the shadow of the divine, just a memory. To be fair, the Inquisitor had begun as the Herald – as much as she fought it, Andraste’s hand had been over her from the start, and it was Andraste’s will that they had heard in the Herald’s voice. She was a part of his faith now, in more ways than she knew. Probably something sacrilegious in that, too, but he would never be able to separate it out enough to tell. Andraste and the Inquisitor, this throne and the Maker’s, the hymns and the sunlight and the lucky coin and the lyrium – they were all tangled up together, occupying the same space in his head and heart, the shrapnel left over from a life led in service, always, to something greater than himself. Cullen could admit to himself that he was no philosopher, no chantry scholar. He was content to let it be.

It was enough that, here and now, the sunlight on the burnished, golden wings of the Inquisitor’s Orlesian throne had shaken him from his thoughts enough that Cole’s words had fallen through the cracks, were lurking somewhere but no longer in the front of his mind. This is what prayer was for. He didn’t think it would matter much to the Maker how he came to it.

So he climbed the stairs, weary without enough sleep, weary from the lyrium, weary for what lay ahead. But he climbed.

He opened the door carefully. As he’d suspected, the Inquisitor was asleep, having piled her pillows on and against Dorian, who sat beside her, reading. He smiled to himself when Cullen appeared, and Cullen rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

“Dorian, might I have a word?”

He looked up from his book, then back down at the sleeping Inquisitor, and then back up with a frown. “Can it wait?” he said softly, and Cullen shook his head.

“It will only take a moment.” Knowing he would lose his nerve if he didn’t press on, he waited as Dorian eased himself out from underneath her and rearranged the pillows, then beckoned him to follow him down the stairs and onto the landing. While the Inquisitor’s quarters had been among the first repairs, the stairs leading to it had gone mostly untouched, except for some structural support here and there. He thought it might be easier to face Dorian here in the gloom, easier than in the sunlight anyway, where all his awkwardness would be more apparent.

Dorian eased the door shut behind them, and then they were alone in the hollow tower. When he turned back around, his arms were tightly crossed. “Is everything all right, Cullen? You’re making me nervous.”

“Yes, it’s – what? You’re nervous? Why?”

He gave a bleak little chuckle and put his weight back – defensive. Cullen stared at him, trying to decipher what that meant, why he was putting distance between them. “In Tevinter,” Dorian began, “the request for a private conversation usually means one of two things: you’re about to begin a torrid love affair, or you’re about to end one. I’ve been on the receiving end of both, I’m afraid. And I know which would apply here.”

“Dorian, no, that’s –  ”

“Not the first heartbreak and not the last. Let’s just get it over with.”

“Maker! I’m not here to cast you aside. Why on earth would I do that?”

Dorian’s gaze swivelled slowly from the dark ceiling down to Cullen, standing there in utter bafflement. He had known that Dorian noticed his flinching away, but hadn’t stopped to imagine how he might interpret it. Hadn’t considered that his history was one of being hidden away and then discarded, for convenience, at a whim. Hadn’t thought.

“If that’s not what you wanted…why bring me down here? Awfully dramatic, if it’s not something so dire.” Dorian still had his arms crossed, still defensive, still protecting himself as best he could. Cullen felt the last few weeks stacking up behind his eyes, saw himself as Dorian would have every time he pulled away, excused himself, cut their conversations short. It was a wound, but one he knew how to close.

So he rubbed the back of his neck, turned to lean on the railing. “Everything is fine,” Cullen said. “I have to talk to you about Cole.”

“Alright,” Dorian said cautiously. “So you heard something you shouldn’t have, I take it?”

Cullen debated that for a moment. “I thought as much, at the start. But now I think it’s better that I know.” He straightened up, crossing his arms, leaning back, not looking Dorian in the eye. “Grasping, gasping, strength in his fingers, enough to bruise.”  He risked a glance out of the corner of his eye to see Dorian’s face go pale. He continued. “I want his hands on me. Afraid to ask for the first time, afraid of losing.”

“I wouldn’t have pressed,” Dorian said quickly, reaching out and then snatching his hand back. “I know your – the Inquisitor told me of, of your first kiss, of how you two have never – ” He turned around somewhat frantically, as though searching for something. “Andraste. I am mortified beyond life. Do these windows open?”

"It's all right, Dorian. That's not..." He rubbed the back of his neck. "This has nothing to do with the Circle."

"Oh?" His tone was complicated: a little hopeful, a little cautious. "What, then?"

This was not a conversation Cullen really knew how to have. He'd spent so long ignoring it, burying it, denying it; he had never imagined there would be a day when he would want to explain it to someone without treating it like an embarrassment. Without apologizing. Even when he'd told the Inquisitor, he had treated it like a wound. But that's not what it was anymore.

"It's a matter of wanting," he said at last. "I understand - I think I understand - what attraction is, what it inspires in people. But I don't have it. Not to anyone."

"Not attracted to me?" Dorian quipped, incredulous. "Have you seen me?"

"Of course I'm attracted to you. Just...not in the way you might hope. I understand that you're beautiful - "

"Classically so."

" - but so is a waterfall, or a sunset, or the way the light would rest on Andraste's outstretched hands in the Kirkwall chantry. None of those things are less beautiful because I can't sleep with them. But I love them all the same."

"You're saying I'm...pretty as a sunset? Suppose I could live with that."

"I want to be clear," Cullen said. "I do want to be with you. Something about you echoes in me. The Inquisitor described it better than I can - like a song I only half-remember, like I've known you, somehow, all my life. But I don't want...what you're used to people wanting."

"So I repeat myself," Dorian said, bowing his head to hide a cautious smile. "What, then?"

“It’s hard to explain, Dorian. It’s hard to describe an absence. But I can tell you what I do want. First, I want peace. I want the three of us – and, Maker willing, everyone else – to come out of this fight alive. And I want to stand next to you, sleep next to you, share every meal and every moment and every joy that is ahead of me. I want to wake up and kiss you and the Inquisitor, and I want to fall asleep in your arms, and I want to watch you argue with her over who steals the blankets when we all know full well that it’s you. I want to be there for every step of your friendship, and thank the Maker every moment for the love I have been given.

“But I won’t have sex with you, just as I won’t with her. And it’s not your fault, but it’s not going to change. I want to love you for the rest of my life,” he said. “And it’s not enough – not nearly as much as you deserve – but I’m hoping it could be.”

Dorian blinked. For once in his life, his mouth opened and no words came out. “Oh,” he said weakly, after a long pause. “Is that all?”

Cullen turned his palms up, empty. “It’s all I have.”

He should have been nervous. Should have been terrified, if he was being honest with himself. Instead, he remembered having a similar conversation with the Inquisitor, standing in the cold sunlight instead of in the warm darkness of the tower. There, with her, he had found a sense of settling – of finally feeling solid earth under his boots after a lifetime of sinking. She had built a foundation in him, or maybe just allowed him to find it, and he stood upon it even now.

And Dorian was staring at him as though there was a joke buried here that he just couldn’t figure out. He had once thought of Dorian as a shore guarded by high cliffs, and the look on his face made Cullen think he was finally looking over the edge, finally trying to find a path down to him.

“That’s why you’ve been pulling away from me.”

Cullen nodded, embarrassed.

“So what are you proposing, here, exactly? A relationship?”

“Dorian, we already have a relationship.”

“We have something, to be sure. And it’s not what I expected. You have to understand, I’ve never…I don’t know what to do here. What to say.”

“You don’t have to answer me right now. I’ve told you what I want.” Cullen rubbed the back of his neck. “And what I don’t. It’s never been good enough, before.”

“You misunderstand me,” Dorian said. “The kind of love I want – it’s a crime, almost, in Tevinter. A failing, surely. Two men can be together for pleasure, but nothing more. Never more. And you walk in here and tell me you want more anyway, like it’s just that easy. Like I have any idea how to be more than…a distraction.”

Cullen allowed himself a wry smile. “I’d be interested to hear what you thought the past few weeks have been about, if not something more.”

Dorian threw his hands in the air, rolled his eyes. “Kaffa vas. I don’t know! I thought perhaps this is the way you southerners did things. Find out how much you like the person before you bed them and move on. You were already with the Inquisitor, what was I supposed to think?”

It was a fair point. Standing in the middle of them, buoyed by the Inquisitor’s confidence and openness and Dorian’s obvious interest, their arrangement hadn’t felt as strange to him as it probably should have.

“So what now?” Dorian said quietly, startling Cullen out of his thoughts.

“Now you take all the time you need,” Cullen said. “You know what I want. Now it’s about what you want.”

“Well, I want to stay,” Dorian said immediately. Cullen took a surprised breath, and Dorian smiled. “What you’re offering is more than enough, Cullen – more than I ever dreamed I would have. What I meant by my question is: what am I allowed now?” He moved closer, sliding one hand along the railing towards Cullen’s but stopping just short of it. Both of them stared at the charged space between their hands. His voice dropped, slipped into that low tone that had always vibrated under Cullen’s skin. “Do I resign myself to only dreaming – am I to forget what it’s like to kiss you?”

“I should hope not.” Cullen waited, wanting Dorian to close the gap, to touch him again, to admit that he felt the pull between them just as Cullen did.

At least Dorian seemed just as distracted as Cullen was. He hadn’t yet managed to look away either, eyes stuck on the space between them, achingly close. “Shall I always hide how strongly I feel this?” His fingers twitched, and Cullen’s heart leapt. “Am I to always hesitate before reaching for you?”

“Never.”

“You’ll have to show me, then, what I am allowed,” Dorian said, a little desperately.

And Cullen, looking down at the gap between their hands, couldn’t figure out what in Andraste’s name they were waiting for. “Start by coming over here and kissing me,” he said, fully expecting Dorian to jump at the chance, fully expecting that the end of Dorian’s long climb would end in a leap. And it didn’t.

Dorian smiled, slid his hand forward on the railing until his fingers tangled up in Cullen’s, slowly, like he was savouring every single centimetre of skin. And then, finally, he looked up into Cullen’s eyes, moving closer, his other hand coming up to trace the scar on Cullen’s lip, and suddenly it was all Cullen could do to keep his breathing steady.

So he let his eyes drift closed as Dorian tilted his face up to Cullen’s, as finally, finally, finally, finally, Dorian was close enough to lean down and kiss properly, as Dorian’s hand on his face pulled him in and held him close and dear and desperate. And this was the leap, the fall that Cullen had been expecting, but it was he who felt it, and he could only hope to the Maker that Dorian felt it as richly as he did.

He slid his free hand onto Dorian’s waist, held him close as they kissed in the quiet and the dark, their hands still twined together on the railing, almost forgotten, as though they’d always been there together, anchors against the world.

When Dorian pulled away at last, Cullen had no clear idea how much time had passed.

“My word,” Dorian said, smiling a little dazedly. “I think I could get used to that.”

Cullen finally disentangled both his hands so that he could bring them both up to frame Dorian’s face, and Dorian gazed back at him still a little lost, a little hopeless, wanting what he had never been allowed to have and afraid of losing it. It would take time to ease that fear out of him, and it was time that Cullen had every intention of taking.

So Cullen kissed him, softly this time, lips curved in a smile and lingering as Dorian’s hands slid onto his hips. It felt different than it had with the Inquisitor. She was sweet, but demanding, always making him pull away first, confident that he would tell her if she pushed too far. Dorian was fiery, like a force only barely contained. He did not demand, but devour, taking everything he was offered, but never asking for more.

But Cullen did want more, had wanted more for so long, so he opened his mouth in an invitation, suppressing a shiver as Dorian hissed in a breath, ran his tongue in a teasing line over Cullen’s bottom lip. And Cullen waited, eyes closed and savouring, with Dorian’s hands clenched hard on his hips. His thoughts were turning blue at the edges as they always did, but he couldn’t stop, not yet, _not yet_ , and Dorian’s mouth teased his open wider, all confidence and charm, and then closed with sudden ferocity, with teeth and tongue and thundering heart, and Cullen gave himself over to it. Whatever else this was, whatever Dorian wanted it to be – in the moment, it felt good. Lovely, like burying your hands in a sack of grain. Like stretching a bolt of heavy fabric between your hands. Like fresh, clear water over river stones.

He understood that it was supposed to feel different. Dorian groaned and shifted closer, and Cullen could feel the heat rolling off him, the weight of his hands as they wandered, and it was fine, it was still fine…

Then Dorian pulled back to drop a wet kiss on Cullen’s cheek, then his jaw, then on his neck, lingering, and something in Cullen reacted, some door deep inside that slammed shut and left only cold behind. He grabbed Dorian by the arms and stepped back to create some breathing room, and Dorian immediately let go of him. “I’m sorry,” Cullen said, catching his breath. “I’m sorry, it’s…I can’t do this, I can’t go farther.”

“I know. I know, I’m sorry.” The smile on his face was a bit too mischievous for his apology to be completely genuine. “Got a bit carried away.”

“So did I.” He pulled Dorian back in, and Dorian dropped his head onto Cullen’s shoulder, face angled in to his neck. “I’ve always enjoyed that part, but anything more…it’s not something I want or need. I can’t bear it.”

“Have you _tried_ it?” Dorian said.

“Yes. And it’s got nothing to do with the person, or the particulars of it. I can’t bear it. Never have. I’m only just beginning…because of the Inquisitor – and because of you, recently – to think that I might still deserve love, even if I can’t offer sex to go with it. To think that it’s not selfish and I’m not just…damaged, somehow…”

Dorian pulled back, stood up straight. Cullen’s hand slipped down to the base of his neck. “I am happy to accept whatever you offer, Cullen. Did you overhear nothing else from our dear ghost boy? He should have told you: three hearts together are worth more than this. Although I would still like to kiss you, if that offer stands.”

Cullen laughed. “I am more than happy to let you. But I don’t want it to…”

“Go further. I understand.”

“Not ever, Dorian. I’m quite sure about that.”

Dorian’s lips quirked, and he leaned in, soft and sure, and kissed him once more. “Not ever it is, then.” He sighed dramatically. “Just my luck, that I fell in love with two people at once and won’t sleep with either. What a strange world we live in.”

Cullen rolled his eyes, pulled him back in, and kissed him again, and again, and again.

 

* * *

 

When they eventually made their way back to the Inquisitor, she was awake, curled serpentine and lazy around a stack of pillows.

“You sorted it out, then?” she said. No preamble, no hedging, no condemnation.

“We did. How are you feeling?” Cullen sat next to her, smoothed back her mussed hair, and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

“Like I want to set myself on fire.”

Dorian laughed, easy and light. “You are a grim young woman, aren’t you? Boredom is not the end of the world.”

“It will be the end of _me_ ,” she grumped, burrowing further under her blankets. “I get potions in the morning and then I’m going! I don’t care where.”

Cullen looked down at her fondly. “Josephine and Leliana have been insisting that we make plans for the Winter Palace. It’s not so far away, now.”

“No,” she moaned. “I want to fight someone, not prance around with nobles.”

“We could make it to the Hinterlands and back in a few days,” Dorian said thoughtfully. “It wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done.”

The Inquisitor’s arms appeared from beneath the blankets, hands flexing in grabby motions. Dorian sat and leaned in curiously, holding his hands out, but she grabbed him by the face instead and patted his cheeks with matronly affection. “See, you. I like you. Good ideas, this boy.”

“I’ll make preparations for the morning, then.” He pulled back, but kept her hands in his. Cullen shifted until he could fold one leg onto the bed and lean back against Dorian, who smiled and ducked his head.

The Inquisitor narrowed her eyes. “No, that won’t do,” she said. “Dorian, you should stay. I’ve been hogging your time too much lately.”

“What? In what way?”

“We roam all over the continent together and leave Cullen here alone. You’ve only just figured each other out. You should stay.”

Cullen shook his head. “You needn’t be concerned for me. I feel better knowing that Dorian is with you out there.”

“I feel easier, as well, when I’m there to stop you from being too foolish. Last time you left without me, you fought a High Dragon, remember.”

She pulled a hand free to hold up a stern finger. “Listen, my darling, if I want to fight a High Dragon there is nothing you or Andraste herself could do to stop me.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Cullen said as Dorian chuckled in defeat. Cullen sat back against him a bit more heavily, and Dorian’s arm came up around his shoulders after a barely-there hesitation, nervously, resting only lightly. Cullen reached up and settled it snug around him, sighing because he loved this, loved these people, loved what they have built here between the three of them, strange and wonderful as it was.

The Inquisitor sucked on her teeth thoughtfully. “What if we’re going somewhere with safe wildlife? Would you be alright with staying then?”

Dorian groaned. “Where in Thedas has wildlife that is safe from you?”

“The Graves is mostly foxes and deer. No wolves, I don’t think?”

Cullen stared at her. “The Graves has bears.”

“Oh, come on. The Hinterlands has more bears.”

“Yes, but the Graves has giant bears, Inquisitor. Giant, dangerous bears.”

Dorian’s voice was warm and rich right next to Cullen’s ear. “She fights them, too, you know. She charges straight at every one of them.”

“Thank you, yes. I’m very good at killing them. No problems there.”

Cullen squeezed Dorian’s hand. “It may be selfish, but I wouldn’t mind having you here with me a bit more.”

Dorian was quiet a moment. “This…Cullen, this is not a puzzle I know how to solve.”

“Well, she has to go and I have to stay. That part we can’t negotiate. So you decide if you want to stay or go, and it will be fine with us either way.”

“Oh, all on me, then?”

“Should it be all on us?” said the Inquisitor. “You’re an equal partner here, Dorian. Of course you should have the final say.”

Once more, it took him a long moment to respond. Cullen had never known Dorian to be speechless, but they had seldom, if ever, discussed something he took this seriously. Cullen didn’t know for sure, but he had to guess that part of his hesitation was doubt. The runaway Tevinter mage, far from kin and country, equal partners with the dread Inquisitor and her commander? They were big titles. Hopefully, Dorian knew that they didn’t carry those names beyond closed doors, that here, nothing mattered except who they were to each other.

“Well, alright then,” he said at length. And he skimmed his palm along the fur ruff of Cullen’s cloak, and somehow Cullen knew that they would be okay.

In the morning, the healer showed up as promised, examined the broken bones, and gave the Inquisitor her potions. With the last of her wounds knit shut, she burst from her room into the great hall with wild energy. Cullen was waiting for her there, hands full of bread and apples and sweet jam, and she blew straight up to him, almost bouncing, and leaned up on tiptoes to kiss him in front of everyone while she grabbed her food. Then she was away again. Out in the early sunlight, Dorian was already mounted and waiting with Bull and Cole. They wheeled and thundered out the gate and were gone. He could hear her whooping joyfully as they raced across the bridge.

 

* * *

 

They returned mere hours before their caravan left for Halamshiral. Leliana had come down from her tower to go over the last of their plans at the war table, and afterwards she stood in the main hall with a wry smile as Josephine paced around her in anxious circles. When the guard sounded the return, Josie fluttered her way into the courtyard to meet them like a puffed-up mother hen.

His Inquisitor seemed invigorated, colour in her cheeks and a smile upon her face, swinging down as farriers and messengers descended on the party. Their saddlebags were unpacked and the Inquisitor was hustled off for a change of clothes and some food – and, Cullen imagined, a short and very polite lecture on responsibility – but Dorian made his way to Cullen unimpeded. Together, they took the stairs to Dorian’s corner of the library and waited for the call to leave.

As they set out from Skyhold to prevent the assassination of the Empress, Cullen was fully aware that this was the first time he’d been able to ride out with the Inquisitor. She led the way on her tall hart and he rode beside her, armoured and imposing with his golden helm strapped to the saddle behind him. Bandits would know better than to attack the Inquisition on the road, but the red Templars were a constant threat. And this, at its core, was his job: to be the Inquisition’s sword and shield against the world. This job was one he could do. And he was proud, in ways he had never expected, to be here doing that job with Dorian on one side and the Inquisitor herself on the other.

Despite everything Leliana and Josephine had told them about the Winter Palace, Cullen was woefully underprepared for the reality of it. Not only was he supposed to sneak Inquisition forces into the most carefully observed and analyzed social setting he could imagine, but he was expected to hold a respectable conversation while doing it. Every time he opened his mouth, his accent seemed more pronounced, his tongue felt clumsier. He became increasingly aware that he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

He had drawn far more attention than any of them had guessed with the sharp lines and bright fabric of his dress uniform. The Orlesians were not shy. They formed a circle around him, whispering, giggling, staring, and he could only think of a different Circle, a different set of whispers. When one of the passing nobles actually grabbed his ass, he reacted so strongly that he very nearly caused a diplomatic incident. Fortunately for all of them, the Inquisitor was nearby. Her presence created a wall of polite distance between him and his admirers. When she asked about them, he told her a half-truth: that the attention only bothered him because hers was the only attention worth having. It was the most coherent thing he’d said all evening.

She asked him to save her a dance. He declined. It was true that he had never learned how, but he also shied from the thought of having someone’s hands on him right now – even hers, even with permission.

And somehow, she saw it. When he declined, she was visibly disappointed, but then her eyebrows came together and she looked sharply at the nobles clustered to their left. He saw the instant she put it together, saw the way the knowledge went sour in her, saw her bright fury blossoming high on her cheeks.

“This is my fault,” she said. “I didn’t stop to think.”

“There are more important matters here, Inquisitor.”

She turned a piercing stare on him. “Not to me,” she said. She looked around, narrowed her eyes at the surrounding nobles, standing just out of earshot. Sera and Dorian and the Iron Bull were here in the palace somewhere – she had chosen her team to be shocking, interesting, a distraction as much as a reminder of the Inquisition’s reach – and there was a look on her face that Cullen had seen before and did not like. It meant she was searching, planning, ready to throw away all of their carefully constructed secrecy, ready to change her tactics because subtlety wasn’t working fast enough.

She would turn a friendly hand into a swinging fist, and she would do it to save him. He loved her for it. He loved her, and it could not be allowed to happen.

“Inquisitor, please,” he said calmly. Inside him was howling, was blood. The lyrium tickled him behind the eyes, just enough that he could not ignore it. But this was territory he had walked before. “I can endure it,” he said, and watched her face change as she pulled her rage back to deep within herself. Mastering it. Saving it for later.

“Give them fair warning,” she said in return, raising her voice just enough that anyone who wanted to could overhear it. “They should know that I have a terrible temper. A fault of my blood, probably, can’t be helped. But I am also the dread Inquisitor, and there are no politics that will save them from me.”

Cullen took her marked hand, bowed over it, kissed her knuckles. Let them see, he thought. Let them know I am hers. Let them know I am claimed and conquered, unassailable as the black city itself. I am not alone.

Once she left, the surrounding nobles turned their gazes on him again. One of them offered a compliment on his hair, another on his eyes. He accepted their remarks with poor grace and got back to work.

He had no idea where Dorian had ended up. He hadn’t seen him all evening. But at the end of the night, when Celene and Briala had been reconciled and Gaspard had been hauled ignominiously off, Cullen was directed to a balcony where the Inquisitor and Dorian stood alone, leaning heavily on the railing, heads down. He stood beside them, quietly at first. Then he asked if she was alright, and she said she was just worn out. But she had orchestrated – somehow – both the rescue of the empress and what would hopefully be a better future for the elves of Orlais, and she had done it while earning the admiration of the Imperial court. ‘Worn out’ probably didn’t begin to cover it. Dorian had a steadying hand on her shoulder, and they stood beside her, staring out into the night very far from home.

Eventually, Cullen scraped his courage together and asked her for a dance. It surprised both of them, but with the music drifting out onto the balcony and the moon overhead and Dorian within arm’s reach, he felt safer than he had all evening. So he asked and she accepted, and when their dance was done, Dorian stepped in for the second.

Alone together on their little balcony, no one else bothered them for the rest of the evening.

 

* * *

 

Even after the success of their mission to Halamshiral, there was no time to rest. After a few days back at Skyhold, the Inquisitor prepared to ride out again, this time for the Exalted Plains. True to their word, the two of them asked Dorian to decide whether he wanted to stay or go.

“I don’t know where you find your energy,” he said. Someone had brought food up, and steam from his tea swirled up past his face as Cullen munched sleepily on fried bread at the desk in the Inquisitor’s quarters. The Inquisitor had gotten up hours earlier and had already eaten. “It’s exhausting just to watch you running all over Thedas. I’ll stay and get some sleep, if you don’t mind.”

“Suit yourself,” she said cheerfully, gathering up her gear and taking an enormous bite of her apple, then dropping the rest of it into Cullen’s hands. She threw her free arm around Cullen’s neck and pressed a sloppy, dramatic kiss to his temple, waved to Dorian, and hopped the railing to hit the ground several floors below before the door had even closed behind her. They could hear her shouting for Vivienne as she walked out into the main hall.

Dorian shook his head. “What an absolute monsoon of a woman.”

Cullen grunted in reply, taking a bite of the apple. This early, he wasn’t so much a person as a bag of sand in the shape of one.

“I’m going back to bed for an hour,” Dorian said, pushing his chair back as he stood. His voice dropped low and private, even though there was no one to overhear. “You’re welcome to join me, Cullen.”

A few short months ago, such a request would have made him panic. As it was, Cullen was hard-pressed to think of something he wanted more. So he just stood and took another bite of his apple before dropping it on the desk and flopping face-first back into the Inquisitor’s bed. He shifted in close to Dorian, curled up in the mage’s arms, and sighed in contentment as Dorian’s thumb traced the line of his shoulder blade. With the morning light still breaking in through the coloured glass windows, Cullen listened to Dorian’s heartbeat as it slowed, listened to both of their hearts settle down together until he could hear only one.

When they were woken an hour later by one of Leliana’s people, Cullen immediately sat up but Dorian didn’t even open his eyes. “Responsibility calls, amatus, but not to me. I’ll see you later.”

“Amatus?” Cullen said, softly, tongue carving out the new word hesitantly. He knew what it meant – knew what he wanted it to mean, knew the sense of it at least.

Dorian rolled over just enough to crack an eye, to crack a smile. “Lovely little word, isn’t it?”

“What does it mean?”

His voice dropped low again, almost teasing, the deep thrum of it a sound that Cullen felt in his chest. “You know what it means.”

So he leaned in, shifted a hand through the mess of Dorian’s bedhead, and Dorian rolled enough that he could receive the kiss Cullen offered, lips warm and dry and welcoming, hands reaching up to grab handfuls of Cullen’s shirt and drag him down further. And Cullen went, braced on his elbows so that they rested chest to chest, palms on Dorian’s jaw as Dorian’s hands slid under his shirt to the skin underneath.

The kiss was long and slow, breath leaving by degrees, noses bumping, Dorian’s eyelashes fluttering against his skin. He had to go – his soldier was waiting – there wasn’t time, but this was lovely, this was precious, a moment of grace that he couldn’t tear himself away from. Dorian’s hands glided up his back, a long, slow drag of warm palms, the faintest scratch of calluses. And that was nice, too, but he didn’t want more, couldn’t accept more. He didn’t want to find out how far this would go if he let it.

His blood was singing bright red, bright blue, two kinds of cravings wound up within each other, inseparable. So he pulled back and Dorian let him.

Dorian’s head fell back against the pillow. “What a pleasant way to wake up,” he said, a little breathless. “Perhaps I won’t be going back to sleep after all.”

Cullen kissed him once more, then hauled himself out of bed. “I’ll see you later…amatus.”

“Festis bei umo canavarum,” Dorian said in return, simple and matter-of-fact, and Cullen had no idea what that could mean. This time, though, he didn’t want to ask. He got dressed, Dorian said something about chess later, and Cullen felt Dorian’s eyes on him the whole way out of the room.

 

* * *

 

When they sat down for their game in the afternoon, Cullen couldn’t shake the feeling that something was strange between them. Dorian was quiet, and when Cullen asked him what it was about Dorian brushed it off as a strange mood and nothing more. Still, he was focused on the game; neither of them had much of a lead until Dorian made a costly mistake towards the end and Cullen quickly cornered him. No snide comment followed, no exasperation. He studied the board as though he couldn’t fathom what had gone wrong. “Cullen, help me reset. I must find a way out of that.”

One of his men had been waiting by the well for the last few minutes, but Cullen obliged, lingering just a moment longer. “I could show you,” he said, “but I had better not arm you against me. Our games are close enough as it is.”

Dorian chuckled and waved him off. “Duty calls, commander. I’ll see you tonight.”

Not for the first time, Cullen wished this was easier, that he could bend to kiss him before leaving the way the Inquisitor often did, just a simple gesture, just enough to remind him _you are loved you are loved you are loved_. But he knew Dorian was particular about public displays of affection, so he just murmured an agreement and walked away instead.

Despite being besieged by work for the remainder of the day, he couldn’t focus. Their game had not sat right with him, and he could not reconcile the feeling with any logical reason for it. That was, perhaps, the most frustrating. After an hour of shuffling papers around without reading a word, he gave up and went to find Dorian. Perhaps it was just a strange mood that affected the both of them, but the Inquisitor had insisted that they discuss even minute difficulties, and he was willing to try it.

When he arrived at Dorian’s usual haunt, however, the man was missing.

As he stood there, wondering where else to look, he realized that he had no idea. Did Dorian even have a room? Where did he sleep before he’d fallen into bed with himself and the Inquisitor? Perhaps there was another library that Cullen wasn’t aware of.

He must have looked lost enough that Fiona took pity on him. She snapped a book closed and walked over, tucking it under her arm. “You seek Dorian?” she said. “He left only a short time ago. Try the tavern.”

Without another option, he gave her a sideways look and headed down the stairs. She had seemed fairly certain of where Dorian had gone, but Cullen had no idea he’d been spending so much time there that his habits were widely known. Troubling, to say the least. But when he got there, the tavern was strangely empty. He couldn’t imagine that he would be spending time with Sera voluntarily, but wandered upstairs anyway. She was lying on her window seat, curled up like a cat in the sunlight, napping, and there was no Dorian on that floor either. He kept going, and there was only Cole in his corner of curiosities, who looked over at Cullen with his strange, watery eyes and said nothing. Cullen thought about asking him if he knew where Dorian had gone, but didn’t think he could handle the feeling of being stared into right this moment. This was getting ridiculous, in any event. He was wasting time when he should be working; he would just have to get over his odd feeling and get back to work. He could discuss it with Dorian later.

He went up the stairs that led to the tower so he could cut back to his office along the wall, and didn’t even consider the fact that it might be occupied until he threw the door open and walked into the room.

But it was occupied. It was _very_ occupied. The Iron Bull took up a lot of space even while sitting in a chair, and with his clothes off he had more muscle than Cullen had ever seen in one place before. But there was no mistaking the hands that clawed furrows in Bull’s back, nor the voice that groaned from under him as his hips rolled, and that was all Cullen saw before let out a sound and threw his arm up in front of his eyes.

“Oh, company. Enjoying the view?” The Iron Bull let out a rumbling laugh, so deep that Cullen felt his face go even redder.

“I’m sorry. I’m…Maker. I didn’t mean to…I’ll go.”

“Cullen?” said Dorian, a bit frantically, but his voice gave out onto a gasp before he could get the whole word out, and Cullen retreated clumsily and shut the door behind him. His hands were shaking and his face was burning so hotly it was almost worse than the withdrawal could be, worse because it left him with a sick twisting low in his gut, a twisting like his lungs were being wrung out like water from a towel.

Cole watched calmly from his corner, arms crossed. Cullen pointed an accusing finger at him. “You could have _warned_ me,” he snapped.

“Why?” Cole said, and Cullen threw his hands up and marched himself down the two flights of stairs and out the door and turned sharply right and went up the stairs and did not look at the door on his right and did not stop until he got back to his office, where he told his troops he wasn’t feeling well and to leave their reports on his desk and get out.

Standing there in the sudden and unusual quiet, he took a moment to process what had just happened.

It made sense, of course. It made a terrible, undeniable sense. Cullen had known for most of his life that love wasn’t enough, sometimes. Not on its own. There was an appetite that love alone could not satisfy, that _he_ could not satisfy. In this case, neither could the Inquisitor. He did not know what that appetite was like, could not begin to say how much it demanded, but he knew that Dorian had it.

He had a chair that he mostly forgot about, since it was always covered in scrolls and parchment, but he didn’t have the energy to clear it off so, instead, he sunk down onto the floor and leaned against his desk, head in his hands. It hurt to breathe, and he knew he had to calm down or risk another episode, but couldn’t quite bring himself to stop. Dorian deserved to be with someone who could give him everything he needed in a relationship; Cullen had been a fool to ignore it and just hope it would work out. Maker. What was he going to tell the Inquisitor? How was he going to tell her? This was his fault, his fault. If he was less broken less selfish less scared more normal. If he was better it might have been enough. If he could have given more, Dorian might have stayed.

The heat started to build in his neck and head and chest and it was too late to push it back. He knew he shouldn’t welcome it, but it would be a distraction. The pain of the symptoms was less than this other hurt. But even then, he knew that Dorian should find happiness where he could. Cullen wanted Dorian to leave them if he was happier somewhere else. He wanted him to be loved properly, he wanted –

The door to his office opened, and a rush of cold air swept in. Cullen clamped a hand over his mouth, unwilling to be discovered. After a breathless pause, the door closed again, gently.

Cullen waited another moment, making sure there was only silence with him, then took a breath, took another, tried to clamp down on the headache that was building behind his eyes.

“Cullen?” said Dorian quietly.

Instead of panic or dread, or even happiness, his voice made Cullen feel oddly vacant. This was all that was left: the conversation, the official acknowledgement of ruin. He knew very well how this went. He had had this conversation before.

“Dorian,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. He scrubbed a hand over his face, then looked over. Dorian was just inside the door, one hand still resting lightly on the handle as though he were about to turn and go. He was a little dishevelled, and clearly distressed. Cullen had never seen such a look on his face. “I didn’t mean to – I’m sorry, truly.”

He was trying to say too many things at once, needed to tell him too many things at once: I wasn’t trying to intrude; I know it’s my fault; I don’t blame you for wanting to leave; I want you to stay and I love you, Maker, I love you. What he ended up saying was, “I just want you to be happy. I understand why you want to leave.”

It wasn’t enough, couldn’t be enough. But it was the best he could do. His headache wasn’t helping, was washing everything in a haze. He leaned his head back against his desk as Dorian stared at him, speechless. The heat was building, and he needed to get outside but wasn’t sure he could get there on his own.

“You cannot mean that,” Dorian said. “You cannot think I – ”

A flash of pain shot up his spine, hot enough to make him gasp and bow forward, and Dorian broke off his protest to rush over even when Cullen tried to wave him away. This was nothing, this was nothing, and he could endure it alone but did not want to.

“You need to cool down.” Dorian’s hand rested lightly on Cullen’s shoulder, hesitant but still there. “Please, let me help.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, not sure which sort of weakness he was apologizing for. “It’s not that bad. I’ll be fine.”

Dorian gathered up an armful of the mess occupying his chair and tossed it aside, then the rest of it.“Why do you keep apologizing?” he said. “Come here, come over – ” Dorian sat in the chair and pulled Cullen to sit on the floor in front of it. Cullen couldn’t have told him no, couldn’t have resisted, wanted to let this play out as long as he could, wanted to put off goodbye until he had to. Dorian pulled his fur cloak over his head and Cullen let him do that, too, and Dorian bundled it in his lap so that Cullen could use it as a pillow, and then he blew into his hands, a ripple of magic twisting the air in the room, and placed his chilled hands on either side of Cullen’s jaw.

The simple kindness of it was almost unbearable. He would miss this familiarity, this feeling of being cared for. He knew that losing Dorian would not cost him the Inquisitor, and that the two of them would still have each other. But it still felt like an ending, like a death. A grievous loss. Dorian’s hands moved every few seconds, one at a time, to place a patch of cold on his forehead, his collarbone, his cheek, the top of his head. And it worked, just as it always did. Cullen felt the headache withering, felt the frantic heat draining from him, took a breath that didn’t hurt.

“There, that’s better, isn’t it?”

Cullen murmured something that was meant to be both an agreement and thanks, let his head rest heavily on the makeshift pillow.

“Cullen? I believe we each have different problems with what happened today. Will you allow me to explain?”

“Of course,” he said immediately. If this was the end, there was no stopping it. At least this, with Dorian’s hands on him one last time, revelling in the feeling of being cared for, would be gentle.

“Where to start?” Dorian sighed, moved both his hands to their original position on Cullen’s jaw, and stroked his thumbs over his cheekbones. “First, I have to apologize. During our game, you asked what was wrong, and I wasn’t honest. Not entirely. I certainly was in a mood, but I should have just told you the reason. I’m still…I don’t quite believe, yet, that it’s alright to love as I do. That admitting to it won’t backfire like a bad spell. Saying it aloud scares me. Saying it aloud cost me my home once already.” He sighed, thumbs still moving restlessly. Cullen held himself very still. “However, that’s no excuse for not being honest with you, and I will do better, in future.”

Cullen remembered Cole’s words, what seemed like so long ago: grasping, gasping, strength in his fingers, enough to bruise – flashes of something that Cullen understood, but had never wanted. “You don’t have to explain yourself,” Cullen said quietly. “I should have known. At the very least, I shouldn’t have been surprised that it came to this.”

“Hmm,” Dorian said. “I assume that in any case, you would have been surprised by the who, if not the what. I do want to clarify that I wasn’t trying to keep my association with Bull a secret. He offered, and I…wanted to accept. And I did. That’s all. As much as I love the moments when you and I…hm – get in each other’s faces, let’s say – they do leave me a bit frustrated.”

Cullen stayed quiet. He could not be saying what Cullen wanted him to be saying, what he thought Dorian was saying. It could not be so simple.

“Have you ever spoken to him about life under the Qun? The qunari are significantly more casual towards such liaisons than we human folk are. He calls it ‘popping a cork’ and the…it’s not a failing of mine that I wanted you to discover. And certainly not like that.”

At that, Cullen actually managed a small laugh. It felt like tearing off a scab. “Desire is not a failing,” he said. “I am to blame for this, I know that. I accept that. You deserve more than what I can offer. You and the Inquisitor both do.”

He had barely gotten the last words out when Dorian sharply twisted his ear. Cullen sat straight up with a shout. When he turned to look at Dorian, however, the man was smiling.

“You deserved that,” he said sternly. “You know very well that we care for you. Neither of us would ask you to be different to satisfy something so silly as a craving.” He sniffed dramatically. “My taste in lovers is impeccable. I’m insulted that you would imply otherwise.”

His ear still stung. His headache had not vanished entirely, and his hands still shook in the aftermath of the withdrawal, but none of it mattered. Dorian was sitting there smugly, speaking as though he were waiting for applause, and he was here and he was _staying_ and Cullen felt as though he’d died without noticing because he had never felt so clean and light and open in all his life. He grinned, sat back on his heels. “Your taste in lovers is far from impeccable. All the men in Skyhold, and you go for – ”

“Tsk. Bull offered.”

“Sure. It had nothing to do with a forbidden romance: the Tevinter and the qunari, respecting your enemy in all the wrong ways.”

“My dear, sweet innocent. I did not go to the Iron Bull to feel _respected_.” Dorian’s smile twisted, and he held his hands out. “Cullen, come here.”

Cullen shuffled closer, let Dorian frame his face with his hands like something treasured and nearly broken, like coming home, like relief. He reached up and put his hands over Dorian’s, and held his gaze and his hands and his heart in the stutter-start of his breathing.

“I want you to understand this,” Dorian said. “I love you as you are, and so does the Inquisitor. You are not broken. We do not think less of you for the way you love us back. You are not to blame, and I am not leaving you, Cullen.”

Cullen rose up on his knees without thinking, because he needed to, leaning in. Dorian met him, unhurried, undemanding. The kiss was tender, barely there, and when he pulled back Dorian wound his arms around Cullen and held him as tightly as he could, so tightly Cullen could feel his heartbeat against his chest.

“Could I adore you more?” Dorian said softly. “Probably not.” Then he let go, turned Cullen around and pushed on his shoulders so that he was sitting once more. “This has gotten weepy enough,” he said, with just the barest catch in his voice. “Sit with me for a moment more, and then we can go back to being mature adults about all this.”

Cullen laughed and settled in, leaning his head back into Dorian’s sheltering hands. Content for what felt like the first time all day, he let their time pass in silence. Still, it felt like there was more that had to be said before the air could clear entirely. There was more he could give, and he wanted to. Still, he spoke softly, not willing to break their comfortable silence more than he had to. “I’m sorry that I cannot love you the way you want me to, Dorian. I’m sorry that neither of us can.”

“What a mad thing to say. I do not hold love so cheaply that I would weigh one kind against another.”

“I mean it. She worries about it too.”

For a long time, Dorian was silent. He stayed bent over Cullen, hands on either side of his neck, a cool comfort. “You’re more important,” he said slowly. “Whatever we have – it’s more important to me than sex. I can find that anywhere. The same is not true of you and the Inquisitor.”

“Do you not wish it were otherwise?”

This time, his answer was immediate. “No. Cullen, no. Of course I daydream about it sometimes – you know very well what you look like, so you can’t blame me for that – but I would not trade us for anything. Truly, I wouldn’t. My dalliance with Bull was only that.”

“I could not bear it,” Cullen said, “if you were to leave me completely.”

“Fortunate, then, that I have no intention of doing so.”

Cullen took a moment to feel those words, to let them settle properly inside his head and heart. Then he reached up, placed his hand over Dorian's cool one. "As long as you come back to me, I don't mind if you...go elsewhere." Dorian's thumb twitched against Cullen's skin. "I just want you to be happy."

Dorian laughed softly. "I expect I'll take you up on that every so often. But you must understand - I am already happy. As much as it is possible to be in this charming backwater you call a country, that is."

"At least you admit it's charming."

"Parts of it," he amended, then sighed. "If only you could see Tevinter, the glory of it. Not the empire, specifically, but the country, the cities, the history. The noble heart of it."

"I would like to see it, one day," Cullen said, surprising himself. He hadn't realized, until that moment, that he felt that way. "If you were with me."

"As I shall be, amatus," Dorian said, smiling so much Cullen could hear it in his voice, and he leaned forward to drop a kiss on Cullen's forehead. "As I shall ever be, as long as you will have me."

 

* * *

 

Halamshiral had been the first hurdle, but the vision of the future that Dorian and the Inquisitor had delivered included one more major event: the demon army that had ridden roughshod over Thedas in a tide of blood.

That puzzle was one that Hawke had solved with her warden friend, Stroud. Leliana had been right to worry about the Grey Wardens disappearing months ago, and no one had listened – no one but the Inquisitor and Hawke.

He had to remind himself that this was the woman who had defeated the Arishok in single combat and saved the city. The first time they ran into each other at Skyhold, they both stopped dead in their tracks. Cullen waited, in absolute dread, to see what she would do. And then her face had split into the biggest, wildest smile that Cullen had ever seen her wear, and he had abruptly turned on his heel and sped away.

She’d chased him down, of course. She’d thrown her arm over his shoulders and clung on as he kept trying to walk away and, still smiling but with the most casual tone of voice she could muster, said “Commander Noodle Hair. Cully-Wully. Honey bear. Did you miss me? Sweet Maker, you’ve aged well. You’re lucky I’m taken…although a little dwarfy bird tells me you’re taken, too! Twice?” She studied his face, and he swatted her with the papers he was holding. “Maybe twice. I’m fine, too. Do you have anything you want me to sign? I know you were really big on being my number one fan back in Kirkwall.” At that, she laughed so hard that she dislodged herself and he finally shook her loose, and she waved enthusiastically when he turned to make sure she wasn’t following him. “Bye, darling! I miss you already! Write me sometime! Varric has always known where to find me but don’t tell your Seeker friend about that!”

By the time the door to his office closed behind him, Cullen felt like he had aged ten years.

Still, somehow, it was good to see her – even though it was also indescribably strange to see her outside of Kirkwall and alone. He had never before seen her without a collection of tagalongs, sometimes making rude faces at him as they ran past on some errand or another. And somehow, once she had been named Champion of Kirkwall, it had never occurred to him that she would ever leave it. But of course she had. She was older now, but no less spirited, no less dangerous. Varric was still at her side as though he always would be, and Cullen had never seen him happier since he’d joined the Inquisition.

The wardens were gathering at Adamant. With the Empress saved, it was time to crush an army before it could even be raised.

The three advisors stood across the table from their Inquisitor, the entirety of Orlais and Ferelden stretched between them, as she stared hard at the Western Approach, mouth pressed into a grim line. Cullen knew what she would choose. She had never flinched before. But he also knew she was taking this time to settle it inside herself, knowing that taking the fortress would cost a river of blood and that she would have to take responsibility for it. As always, his heart ached for her, his lionheart, for how she was made to carry the weight of choice, for making the decisions that no one else wanted to, for how nobly she bore it even so.

She looked up after a moment and locked eyes with him across the table. “I give the order,” she said, unwavering. Cullen’s hands clenched briefly on his sword hilt. “We move to break Adamant, and we move immediately.”

“Yes, Inquisitor.”

She nodded and spun on her heel, moving with a charged, predatory grace, the gait she adopted when she was preparing to become terrible, and Cullen watched her go with mounting excitement and mounting dread, watching as she charged off to war.

They left that day, rows upon rows of Inquisition forces winding their way down the mountain paths. Under forced march, with mounted chargers clearing the path for the army, they could reach Adamant in eight days. In that time, the Wardens in Adamant would be building their demon army, and they would know that they would soon be under siege. Eight days was the best they could do, but it would have to be enough. The survival of Thedas hinged upon it.

The Inquisitor and her party rode with the vanguard, in the lead, rallying and encouraging, a living beacon that their faithful charged gleefully after. Cullen rode in the middle, fielding reports from every branch of their forces, calling the stops each evening and the advances at first light, organizing, dispatching. Commanding. Even after returning to his tent in the evenings, he barely slept. He stood at his table and stared at the schematics Leliana had acquired, over all he could learn about Adamant, looking for an advantage that never presented itself. The siege engines would work. The choke points would work. Beyond that, all he could do was pray.

The first night’s bivouac was sloppy, hasty; he spent most of his night solving problems of water supply and privy locations, of food tents and wet shoes, of forgotten equipment and anxious forces. The Inquisitor, he had to assume, was doing as much amongst the vanguard. No one had gotten enough rest when Cullen roused the camp to resume their march. But she returned on the second night, picking her way carefully between the groups of sleepers, arriving after dark to a storm of murmured welcomes and slipping from her hart into his arms. Both of them slept with their boots on, with their gear close at hand, curled into each other against the darkness outside, against what was to come.

On the fourth day, Cullen looked up to see Dorian riding alongside him, having dropped back from the vanguard without him noticing. His pleased surprise must have shown on his face, because Dorian laughed instead of teasing him about his lack of observation and reached over to squeeze Cullen’s hand. But after not seeing him for four days, Cullen pulled him over, leaning across the space between their horses, and kissed him. Someone behind them whistled and a laugh rippled through the ranks, and Cullen felt Dorian smile against his lips. That day seemed shorter, easier, with Dorian beside him to drop joking comments about what he imagined the Inquisitor was doing in the lead and about the occasional camp of red Templars that they found as they crossed the Exalted Plains, already laid to waste and picked clean for supplies, an indicator of the violence their advance forces were inflicting upon all in their path.

Dorian stayed for the remainder of the day, and for the night, ducking into Cullen’s tent once the camp was settled and shedding his traveling cloak.

“I don’t know how you bear it,” he said, sitting on Cullen’s cot to tug his boots off. “At least in the vanguard there are people to kill, things to do. All you do in the middle is march. Without me here, it must be endlessly dull.”

“You’re not wrong,” Cullen said absently, unbuckling his breastplate with one hand and holding a sheaf of daily final reports in his hand. His legs and back ached from the journey, from so long spent on horseback in the armour he was too scared to take off. That came with the territory of war, he knew, and he was more concerned about their rationing: they were going through their food supply too quickly, and he thought that perhaps they could ask the advance forces to do some hunting as they moved. “At least you’re used to long treks on horseback.”

Dorian tucked his boots under the bed and rose, stretching. “That is one advantage of our dear Inquisitor’s adventurous spirit, yes. Here, let me – ”

Cullen let his hand fall away as Dorian hefted off his armour, taking a deep, unburdened breath as the weight disappeared. Dorian set the heavy plate down with the rest of his armour and then tugged the reports out of Cullen’s hands as well.

“I remember how sore a day in the saddle can make you. Come lie down.” He guided Cullen onto his stomach, then sat astride him, a heavy, familiar weight. His thumbs pressed in on either side of his spine, holding pressure briefly and working their way down as Cullen sighed into his pillow.

Even through his cotton shirt, Dorian’s hands were warm, and they moved with practiced strength, seeking out sore places and easing them away. He worked in silence, occasionally making a small sound of sympathy as Cullen flinched away from an unexpectedly painful ache. Even so, Cullen’s head seemed to be sinking further and further into his pillow. The pull of sleep dragged heavily on him, an inner riptide, warm and welcoming, and Dorian’s careful hands guided him down, and down, and down, until nothing else remained.

When the guard woke him before dawn, he found Dorian twined around him, head resting on Cullen’s chest, hair tousled around his face like a dark cloud. In the cold of the early morning, Cullen watched him breathe in his sleep for a long, self-indulgent moment. Then he brushed Dorian’s hair back from his face and kissed him awake.

At the end of the eighth day’s marching, the Inquisitor herself rode back with the news that they were at the fringes of the Western Approach and that they would reach Adamant the following day. Cullen hadn’t seen her for two days, and couldn’t help noticing that she looked drawn – not tired, exactly, but stretched thin. Her mount wheeled and reared as she made the announcement, and her voice was quickly lost as her forces brandished their steel and shouted for her, for Andraste, for blood. Cullen watched her with his heart in his throat, shouting with a voice full of pride and fear and terrible, vengeful love.

Their camp that evening was tense, quiet. Instead of standing at his table, Cullen walked amongst his troops, offering what strength he could. The sappers that Josephine had acquired for them stood on the outskirts, outlined against the stone cliffs in the moonlight, their braces of metal glinting darkly in the subtle light.

He found it difficult to look at them. War was his job, but there had been no call for such terrible machines in the Circle. They sat quietly, almost invisibly, in the night, but they were capable of immense destructive power. They reminded him of mages. They reminded him, for the first time in days, of lyrium. The longing for it was subdued, peripheral, pushed aside by what would come the next day. He was reminded of it – nothing more. Still, when he was too tired to hold a proper conversation and was forced to return to his tent, he couldn’t help but feel grateful that the siege engines would be out of sight.

When he got back to his tent, a candle was burning inside. A white hart and an Amaranthine charger were tethered next to his own horse, heads low and legs cocked. Their ears twitched as he made his way inside. A single candle sat on the sideboard, casting soft shadows on the tent walls, glinting on Dorian’s staff where it rested against the table next to Cullen’s polished lion helm and the scale accents of the Inquisitor’s dragon armour. Dorian’s boots were tucked under the bed, and he was already mostly asleep, hiding from the desert chill under layers of blankets. The Inquisitor sat on the edge of the bed with her hands clasped so that the green glow of the anchor seeped out between them. She still looked stretched thin, but Cullen realized now that it wasn’t from stress as much as hunger. Whatever fight they would find at Adamant, she was eager for it. With the green glow from her hands bleeding up onto her face, catching in her eyes, she looked mysterious, wrathful – divine.

And tomorrow, he would break a fortress open so that both of them could charge through the fracture, to put down whatever they found within or die in the attempt.

So he went to her. Not as a lover, but as one of her faithful, a supplicant. He went to his knees before her, and took her clasped hands in his. He bowed his head over their hands and, silently, with every ounce of faith he possessed, with every hymn he had ever learned, he prayed.

 

* * *

 

In the sweltering heat of the Western Aapproach, their army wrestled the siege engines into position, readied the battering ram, geared up and organized. By the time they had finally reached the fortress, night was falling. Still, they pressed on, drumming, chanting, marching forward relentless and resolute. Cullen wanted the wardens of Adamant to know they were coming. He wanted them nervous. The first volley of arrows from the fortress’ walls fell short and were trodden into the sand as his troops advanced, and with Inquisition forces on the battlements and Inquisition forces at the gates, Adamant broke.

The Inquisitor was among the first to stride through the shattered gate. She moved with stern impatience, confident and vicious and predatory, and Dorian, Varric, and Blackwall were on her heels, and the Inquisition flooded in like a living river behind her.

After taking the lower bailey, Cullen strode up to her. She did not need urging to continue, but they needed support on the battlements. Hawke was there, but was only one woman. Cullen knew better than to underestimate her, but she could only do so much. So he reminded the Inquisitor of the choke points, pointed her towards the battlements, and promised her that they would do all they could to occupy the main force of demons as she attempted to punch her way through to Clarel.

All around them was screaming, clashing metal, roaring flames. There was no time for anything more. Dorian clapped him on the shoulder, and the three of them turned from each other to continue their bloody work.

He lost track of time. The flames lit the castle walls as the sun vanished entirely, giving their battleground a hellish setting. He lost track – of how many times wicked claws raked across his breastplate, clattered off his helm, of how many times he swung, countered, connected, of how many times he wrenched his sword free of flesh and bone to swing again. There was no sign of the Inquisitor. His hands were sweating inside his gauntlets, and his sword and shield were covered in gore. Blood dripped languidly from the canines of his lion helm whenever he stopped to breathe.

Once, he glanced up at the sound of cheering from the battlements, and Hawke stood at the edge, grinning and blowing him a kiss. They had taken the battlements, then. There was still no sign of the Inquisitor.

A flicker of movement to his left, and his shield snapped up on instinct. The demon that had been swinging for his head caught the shield instead, a pair of blows so heavy that his arm went numb. Cullen dropped his weight, planted his feet, used the shield to throw the demon back. It sprawled, threw up its hood, shrieked at him from the dirt. He swung, then dodged away before the blow could land as the demon’s mage fired a pair of bolts at him. Instead of ducking again, he charged straight past the demon, shield up, and slammed into her. As she went down, he spun and slashed the demon, then spun again and swung straight down at the prostrate mage. She brought her staff up, but the barrier wasn’t fast enough, and his sword cracked straight through the staff to the muscle and bone beneath. The demon jumped at him, and he slammed his shield straight up into its head. It crumpled to the ground, writhing. There were more of these deadly pairs to his right, more above, more within – and the Inquisitor would be facing this and worse. She had Dorian and the others. They had Stroud. They would make it. They always did. Cullen plunged his sword into the demon’s neck, tried to ignore the blood, tried to ignore how much easier this would be if he were still a Templar. He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and waded back into the fray.

After an age, the fighting slowed. The Inquisition was turning the tide, with reinforcements flooding through the fortress from all the choke points. After an age, Cullen stopped fighting. He turned his sword over to one of his captains, pulled the gory lion helm from his head, and held it aloft with a roar of bloody victory. His troops shook their shields, raising a clamour for everyone still fighting to hear. Groups of them disappeared back into the fortress to root out the last of the enemy or help their fellows, and then a shriek tore through the night, loud, echoing, thundering down from above as Corypheus’ dragon swooped in to land on one of the highest towers.

A chill plunged through Cullen as understanding overtook him. The dragon would only have been called if the Inquisitor was still alive, but she had nowhere to run up there. None of them did. And no one here could make it in time to save them. Still, he ordered them to go; six or seven of the youngest sprinted for the stairs, and Cullen watched them go, knowing that it wasn’t enough. He stood in the courtyard with his head craned all the way back and watched as it roared, as someone fired a purple shot of flame at it, as it answered with flame of its own and took wing.

Up on the highest parapet, really just an outcropping of crumbling stone, a sudden explosion rocked the entire fortress. The structure collapsed. Enormous blocks of masonry began to tumble down along with the dragon, which caught itself at the last moment and glided out of the way.

A moment later, he got his first glimpse of the Inquisitor.

She appeared at the brink, pulling warden Stroud away from the edge, and then again as the ground fell out from beneath her.

He knew her even in the dark, even in freefall, a small green comet plummeting through the night. More dark shapes fell after her, arms and legs flailing as they tumbled down, one of which trailed a staff that erupted with sparks. He watched them fall.

Someone screamed. There was a flash of green from below the curtain wall, and then there was only silence.

Cullen stood with his feet on cold, solid stone and felt like he was spinning. He stared at the point where they had vanished from his sight and could see only a chasm into which he could vanish entirely if he did not look away. He was dizzy, groundless. All around him was raucous noise. Shouting. People running. His hand clenched on a sword hilt that wasn’t there, curled into a fist.

Someone touched his arm. He raised his head as though emerging from dark water, heavy and breathing hard, only just realizing that he had been holding his breath since they fell.

“Commander, I’m sorry,” the woman said. “You’re needed in the main courtyard. They’ve got Erimond.”

And he reacted. He knew how to do this – to move on instinct, to keep fighting because it was all that was left. He remembered how to move his feet, how to breathe, picked up his sword and followed his soldier to the stairs, to the courtyard. There was no time for anything else. Just moving. Just keeping himself alive. Just for now.

The enormous rift in the center of the courtyard washed everything in a sickly green glow: soldiers, wardens, corpses, all. A group of Inquisition soldiers stood around a man on his knees, bound and bloody, with a broken mage’s staff in front of him. He raised his head as Cullen walked in. There was blood on his teeth when he smiled, blood in his eyes.

“I have lost the Wardens,” he said triumphantly, “but I have cost you your Inquisitor. My master will – ”

One of the soldiers struck him and Erimond fell silent, spat a gob of blood in Cullen’s direction with another sneering smile.

No one would question him if he ordered Erimond’s execution.

No one would stop him. The sword was already in his hand.

It would be easy.

“Take him back to Skyhold for judgement,” he heard himself say instead. A wave of dizziness swept over him. There was a looming vacancy in the idea of Skyhold that he couldn’t afford to look at too closely, and he had to think hard for a moment just to breathe and stand. The fighting was over, but the rift was still here. There was still work to be done.

His soldiers dragged Erimond away roughly to the jeering of the Grey Wardens. Before he could say anything more, there was a clattering on the stairs and the group of soldiers who had sprinted for the tower when the dragon appeared came rushing back down, red-faced and winded.

“Commander!” one of them gasped. “They fell, sir. All of them. Not – they fell into, there was a, a rift, and –”

“We think they fell into the Fade, sir!”

Cullen would be the first to admit that he didn’t understand very much about the Fade, but he was reasonably certain that passing bodily into it was impossible. They were trying to spare him, perhaps. That was fine. He would insist on accuracy in their formal reports once they returned to Skyhold, but for now…for now, that was fine.

“Speak to Solas about it, then,” he said. “Check the battlements.”

The two who had spoken jogged off wearily. The courtyard was full of people and every one of them seemed to be looking to him. The rift pulsed ominously.

“Someone explain to me what happened here,” he said. Then the rift pulsed again, louder, tendrils of energy reaching out into the ground, then again. “Arms!” he shouted. “Be ready!”

The tendrils fastened to the flagstones, erupted bright and sharp and solid. The air pinched, twisted, sent goosebumps crawling up Cullen’s arms, and with a scream a fresh set of demons tore their way into the world. Cullen waded into the fray with a shout, and with demon blood on his sword and demon flesh at the end of his fist he forgot, for just a moment, that he was standing on the brink of an abyss and just waiting his turn to be pulled in.

The rift pulsed again as he put his boot on a demon’s face to pull his sword free, and he looked up to see where they would spawn, to see who needed the most help. His soldiers were still fighting the first wave. This was going to turn ugly very quickly.

A flash of memory tore through him, of fighting beneath the breach in the earliest days, of holding the mountain paths as demons thundered down from the sky. Of losing ground, with no way to close the rifts, no way to gain it back. Of losing dozens of lives every minute, being pushed back until Cassandra arrived with the Herald on her heels. He had not known, back then. He had known so little.

The rift shuddered, flared so brightly Cullen had to shield his eyes. And with a shout, Varric fell from the rift. Blackwall staggered out on his heels, reaching out to pull Varric to his feet as they put more distance between themselves and the rift. Cullen wasn’t aware that he’d started moving until he was almost beside them, and then the rift rippled again and Dorian leapt out of it, landing heavily on both feet with his staff in hand.

It could not be. It could not be so simple. But he didn’t care. Dorian was reaching for him and Cullen grabbed him and held on as tightly as he could, feeling the way Dorian shook against him and how painfully tight his grip was, and he looked up at the rift because he knew the Inquisitor would come through any second.

And the seconds stretched. The rift hung in the air calmly, vacantly. Dorian lifted his head and turned after she did not come through.

“No…” Dorian said. “She was right behind us. They were all…”

“C’mon, Hawke,” Varric whispered. “Not like this.”

Blackwall was already fighting again, helping the soldiers put down the remaining few demons. And still the rift remained calm.

Soundlessly, Dorian turned away from the rift and ducked his head down against Cullen’s chest.

Then the rift tore open. Hawke came tumbling out, landing gracefully and striding directly over to Varric with a twisted expression on her face. And behind her came the Inquisitor.

She stepped from the Fade with the anchor already afire, landing solid and steady and calm. As she stood, she clenched her marked hand with righteous surety and the rift exploded. The remaining demons died with hellish shrieks as the rift tore itself into pieces and closed.

The Inquisitor glanced about briefly, skimming the crowd. Cullen knew she was checking to make sure they had all made it through, to make sure it was over. And he knew by the way she refused to look at him that something terrible had happened in the Fade. It took him longer than it should have to realize that Warden Stroud had not been seen since he fell from the parapet with the rest of them.

She climbed up onto the platform that had once held the rift, and Hawke spoke quietly to her for a moment. Then she addressed the remaining Grey Wardens. She told them that Stroud had sacrificed himself in the Fade. She asked them to fight for the Inquisition. And only when it was over did she step down and come to them.

She let herself be folded into their embrace, sheltering between them as she sagged, weary and heartsick and safe at last. Dorian leaned his head on Cullen’s shoulder and they waited, supporting each other until the Inquisitor lifted her head, scrubbed her face clean with the inside of her sleeves, and stood tall once again.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything, but not until we get out of here. I need to get out of here. Okay?”

“Of course.” Cullen pulled a glove off with his teeth so that he could wipe away a smear of blood across her nose. Dorian made a disgusted sound and grabbed the glove from him, holding it out to the side and clearly trying to avoid both the blood and the sweat on it.

Cullen swept a thumb across the Inquisitor’s cheek for good measure, just needing to touch her until she felt real again, and with his hand cupping her jaw he kissed her forehead and held there until the hand she had wrapped around his wrist stopped trembling.

“Okay,” she said. She looked up at both of them, kissed Dorian’s cheek, kissed Cullen’s lips, lingering just a moment. Then she pulled away from them, head up, centered, fully herself again. “Let’s go home,” she said, and Cullen had never wanted anything more.

 

* * *

 

After being defeated completely at both Halamshiral and the Western Approach, Corypheus was left with few options. They received reports that he was moving for the Arbor Wilds and moving fast, seeking something. Whatever it was, he could not be allowed to have it. This time, there was nothing more to discuss.

The Winter Palace had not been simple, but this was. Leliana and Josephine sent in as many forces as they could muster to slow them down, called in favours, threw everything they had in Corypheus’ path, and Cullen gathered the Inquisition’s army in his mailed fist and brought it down like a hammering wave on the tail end of his forces.

The Inquisition’s faithful carved a path through the army of red Templars, carved a path through the forest, left bodies from both sides behind as they pushed for the front lines. No time for delicacy, no time for diplomacy. Orlesians and Fereldans stood shoulder to shoulder and charged ahead together. Blood was blood in any language, and Corypheus had drawn from them all in one way or another.

Cullen led the charge. He would accept nothing less from himself, would not let another lead in his place, would not shy from the same dangers the Inquisitor faced every day. Somewhere in the forest, Bull led the Chargers on a different route, cutting off retreats, setting ambushes, doing what they could. Somewhere in the forest, Leliana and her agents were doing similar work. Their task was only complicated by the presence of strange elven archers, half-invisible in the shadows between the trees and moving too quickly to track. They attacked the red Templars and the Inquisition in equal measure, at least. Whatever lay in the temple, both it and the forest itself, it seemed, were defended.

There were the elven and their arrows. There were demons, too, and their mage abominations, the last of the wardens that had not been scoured from Adamant. And there were Templars – faces he might have recognized, once, faces that twisted in fury when they saw him, red beneath the skin, red in the eyes. If things had been otherwise, he might have been one of them. If not for Hawke…if not for the Inquisitor, for Dorian, if not for a reason to fight.

But things were otherwise. Just being near the red Templars made his blood sing for the lyrium, so potent that he could almost feel it rasping against his skin, a lure so powerful that it might have ruined him, once. But things were otherwise. He led the charge every time, carving a path through Corypheus’ forces until the river ran a deep and poisonous red. And every charge was for vengeance: for everyone who had died to get them here, for everyone who would die today, for Haven and Adamant and Kirkwall and the innocent blood on Corypheus’ hands. And slowly, somewhere at the bottom of his heart, he found vengeance for his own suffering, too, for the torture at the Circle and the lyrium withdrawal, for Meredith’s betrayal of his trust and of the order that he had loved.

They were so close. Samson was just ahead, just entering the mysterious temple. Between Leliana’s scouts and the Orlesian special forces that had raced ahead to impede them, they had caught up. And still they pressed, swords shattering on the backs of the behemoths as each one was forced to its knees and beaten into oblivion, catching arrows on their shields from the strange elven archers lurking in the shadows.

And then the Inquisitor blew past him, and a sizzling ball of flame caught the Templar he was fighting in the neck, blasting him backwards. Cullen recognized Dorian’s magic as it clung, consuming the Templar that writhed on the ground, but didn’t spot him until he and the Inquisitor were almost out of sight, charging straight ahead, relentless and bloody and unerringly vicious.

For the first time in days, Cullen knew that they would make it. Their forces had done their work, had caught up, stalled the red Templars, carved a path for her to fly down. All that remained was Samson, and she carried the glyph that would break his armour.

They would make it. They would win.

Maker willing, they would make it back to him as well.

“Forward!” he shouted, hefting his shield back into position. Behind and beside him, the Inquisition advanced, chanting war songs in two different, discordant tongues, a thicket of swords and spears and shields pressed onward by what was no longer a vain and foolish hope, but a future. One that could be fought for. One that could be won.

Still, Corypheus’ forces resisted. The Inquisition bought every moment and every step with blood and screaming, with sweat in their eyes, with aching muscles, shields coming up just a fraction of a second slower each time. Cullen’s boots were soaked from the river, feet sliding and squishing inside them as he moved.  And he rallied because that was his job, picked his troops up and got them back into line because that was how they would live through this. There was not much room left to think about the temple. All of his energy was spent on organizing the march until he bent to haul a bloodied mage to her feet and both of them flinched at once, heads swivelling together to gaze downriver. Even at this distance, they felt the pinch-twist of powerful magic in the air, a gathering tension that made Cullen’s hair stand on end. Then, it ruptured. The ground shook from the force of the explosion, trees groaning ominously above them.

Impossible to know what had caused it. Impossible to know what it had caused. The mage beside him was clutching her arm to her chest, staff tucked awkwardly into the crook of her elbow.

“Maker preserve us,” she said quietly. “Never felt magic like that in my life.”

Then, above them, Corypheus’ dragon swooped past with silent fury. Cullen thought of Adamant, of a different explosion but the same dragon. He thought of how close he had come to losing everything.

Now, as before, there was nothing he could do for his Inquisitor, for Dorian. He was still too far away. He had to trust that they could take care of each other. He had to trust them both to stay alive. They were trusting him to do the same.

“Let me carry that for you,” he said to the mage, and she let her staff fall into his hands without hesitation.

The moment struck him as a strange one, even in the midst of all this, but he didn’t have time to think about it too closely. “Rylen!” he shouted, and his captain came trotting over, weary but unharmed. “Set up a perimeter here. We’re going to dig in, set up medical stations. I want updated positions and status of all our forces. Send a runner, not a bird, with a report for Josephine. And have someone find Leliana for me. Go.”

As the perimeter took shape around them, Cullen guided the mage to a group of the other wounded, helped her sit and handed back her staff. Soldiers were turning out their pockets to build a stockpile of potions and supplies, were starting fires to boil the water they collected from the river. Cullen watched how quickly the makeshift camp sprang up, proud of how well they came together. The day was not done. Their work was not over. But he could give them a place to breathe until it was.

Through the trees – not very far off at all – he could hear the heavy wingbeats of the dragon, the scraping of its claws on something hard, its frustrated roaring. He decided to take that as a good sign.

Leliana appeared almost immediately after Rylen departed, entirely unnoticed until she was right beside him. She gave him a rough map of the forest without being asked, pointing out the symbols she had used to mark their forces and Corypheus’, showing him their location and that of the temple, and the area around the temple where her spies were deployed. Cullen didn’t even have time to be irritated that she was clearly keeping tabs on him before she disappeared again.

He roamed the perimeter himself, waiting for Rylen to report back, for more wounded from other units to start trickling in, and at one point a blue light lit the entire forest, a shocking blue that reminded him of lyrium, of how tired he was. Nothing more than a dull ache, familiar, easy to ignore. He was too tired to give the craving more than a thought. The light faded after a moment, and a mere moment after that a bird came winging in from the direction of the temple. Cullen tore the message open. It said that Corypheus and his dragon had fled. It said that the Inquisitor and her team had vanished without a trace.

It meant victory. Corypheus had abandoned his army, and so he was going to lose it. Cullen would not allow a single one of them to leave this forest. They had won.

Dorian and the Inquisitor could not be dead. The note had said vanished, not dead. It would have to be enough. He had work to do here, and he would do it. Then, soon, they would both turn up somewhere, safe and unharmed, and he could return to them and lay this victory in their laps and all would be as it should.

There was no time to think of rest. Wanting it too much would drag him down, so he kept pacing the perimeter, checking in with his troops, organizing sorties to find and put down the last holdouts of Corypheus’ army. He wondered if they knew that they had been abandoned. He hoped so.

By the time night fell over the forest, their forward camp had been swollen by soldiers pouring in from every direction. Carts had come from the rear camp along with messages from both the Empress and Josephine, carts loaded with blankets, food, fresh water, supplies. Tents had sprung up around mage fires; the soldiers were too suspicious of the trees and the old elven magic in them to burn any wood, but they hadn’t had any trouble with the strange elves from earlier since the flash of light from the temple. Cullen had taken off his helmet, put down his sword and shield. As the dark settled in, he passed command to one of his captains and found a quiet spot near the river to rest for a few hours. He wedged his shield up against a rock, laid out flat behind it in his armour, balled his lion fur up under his head, and was asleep before he had taken a complete breath in and out.

A hand on his shoulder woke him, even though he had no recollection of either falling or being asleep. He scrubbed a hand over his face and sat up. Someone had put a blanket over him as he slept, and Leliana was crouched next to him with a bird on her arm.

His heart jumped painfully in his chest. “Have you received word? The Inquisitor?”

“They’re safe, Cullen. All of them.”

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, almost dizzy.

“They went back to Skyhold through an eluvian. I have drawn up a report to send back. Is there anything you would like to add?”

He waved a hand. “I trust you have the matter under control. Does it say anything else? About the temple, perhaps?”

“It says only that whatever Corypheus sought, he did not get it. Nothing else. This letter was written in a hurry, so I suspect that another is on the way.”

“Alright.” He glanced around, but it was fully dark now, and he had no way to tell what hour it was. He had been alone when he fell asleep, but not any longer; dark shapes were huddled in sleep to either side of him, seeking the soft whisper of the water just as he had. When he looked back, Leliana had not moved. “Is there something else?”

She studied him in the brush of moonlight that filtered through the trees. “Cullen, I am afraid for Skyhold. Corypheus is gone, but he knows our army is here. If he should decide to turn his attention to an easier target…”

She was right, of course. He hadn’t seen it. “I will stay,” he found himself saying, “to see to the cleanup of Corypheus’ forces here. In the morning, I will organize a battalion to return to Skyhold. It will take days for them to return, but it’s the best we can do.”

She shook her head. “Josie and I think you should return with them. Allowing the Orlesians to command here will be good for our alliance.”

He took a moment to indulge himself in the thought of going home. He wanted to go, of course, Maker, he wanted it so badly. But he shook his head. “I command the Inquisition’s forces. As long as they remain here, so do I.”

Leliana reached out and ruffled his hair, and he was so shocked that he didn’t even object until she was already standing. “You are not very good at the Game, Commander. You should at least consider our advice. Goodnight.”

Cullen sat next to the river as she disappeared into the night. The other sleepers in the area apparently hadn’t been disturbed by their conversation. He thought about getting up, but his hands rested heavy on the blanket; he wanted to start organizing those who would return to Skyhold, but he was already lying on his back again. The stars above the trees were blurring in his vision and the river was at his feet and without meaning to, he slipped steadily back into sleep.

A hand on his shoulder woke him again, and he opened his eyes to the bleary, grey light of pre-dawn.

“Up you get, Commander. Time to leave soon.”

“Rylen?” Cullen sat up, smothered a yawn with a stretch. “Update me.”

“Hard work’s been done,” he said as Cullen stood. Rylen handed him Leliana’s map from the day before, smudged and marked in new places. “Scout Harding led a couple of night sorties on any camps that weren’t ours. Scattered most of the surviving Templars into the forest, split ‘em up. They’ll be easy cleanup today.”

“Good to hear. We need to send a contingent back to Skyhold as soon as possible.” Morning rations were still being unpacked, but someone had thought to start brewing coffee and Cullen let one of the cooks press a mug of it into his hands. Better not to wonder who had decided to take valuable cart space with a luxury like this and just be grateful that someone had.

“So…” Rylen’s voice took on a forcibly casual pitch that put Cullen’s back up. “Have you decided how many men you’re going to take back with you?”

“At least forty, if we can spare them,” Cullen said frostily. “But I’m not going.”

“Whoops, you are though.” Rylen winked at him encouragingly, but when Cullen returned him nothing but a frown he sighed dramatically instead. “Would that our noble Commander could remain with his forces for the duration of this ridiculously simple cleanup operation, but orders are orders. Sir.”

“My orders are the only ones that should concern you, captain.”

“Yes, sir. But Nightingale has decided that you should go back and I’m more scared of her than I am of you.”

Cullen dragged a hand down his face, handed Rylen the remainder of his coffee, and walked upstream to wash his face in the cold water so that he could be properly awake when he had to fight Leliana.

He took his time, took a piss against a tree that was probably older than Ferelden’s monarchy, took a moment to enjoy the relative quiet as the camp slowly roused itself from sleep. Then he asked after their spymaster up and down the supply lines. He should have known better, should have known that Leliana wouldn’t be found unless she wanted to be. By the time he returned to the forward camp, the sun was coming up and the business of feeding and preparing a small chunk of army was well underway; a group of soldiers milled around the mage fires, loading packs with one hand and munching on fried bread with the other. Cullen’s horse – the horse he had left behind at the rear camp and which had, apparently, shown up sometime during the night – was already saddled and waiting patiently.

“You’re joking,” he said, mostly to himself. He should have been furious. He was, a little. But it was so hard to fight against something he wanted so desperately and which seemed determined to happen whether he wanted it or not. He could have put a stop to this nonsense. The truth was that he just didn’t want to.

Cullen turned at the sound of a loud babble of Orlesian from across the camp, just in time to witness the arrival of a contingent of Orlesian forces on horseback. A pair of them were chevaliers, shadowed by squires who carried their fearsome lances. With their arrival, Cullen knew that he had lost. He could still have ordered away officers or troops, could still have refused a fellow commander. But the chevaliers were Orlesian nobility. So he greeted them politely, and ceded his authority to them with the utmost civility, and ultimately let Rylen pack him onto his horse and send him off with a cheerful wave and forty-five of their best at his heels, including Blackwall and Vivienne.

It was out of his hands, he told himself as they began the long trek out of the Arbor Wilds. Josephine knew best, as far as the Orlesians were concerned. And Leliana couldn’t be stopped once she had put her mind to something. It was not his fault that he was forced to abandon his post, he told himself, but he still felt guilty about it.

Once they got out of the forest and into the open, on the road back to the mountains, the guilt faded. It couldn’t stand against how happy he was to go home, back to safe hands and safe hearts, to rest. It would be nice, for once, to be the one who returned victorious.

The hills turned into mountains after two days. After three days, when they finally began the climb up the mountain, Cullen had to stop himself from charging ahead. They saw no dragon, no smoke or fire, no retreat. Skyhold came into view intact and apparently unharmed by early evening. And two figures were riding out from it, unhurried but headed directly for them, and Cullen couldn’t make himself stay a moment longer. He dug in his heels and his horse trotted happily ahead as his soldiers whooped and cheered him on.

The Inquisitor was waving and calling to him, and as they drew up next to each other she threw her arms around his neck. He pulled her from her saddle and into his, holding her as closely as he could and laughing, full of the smell and the sound of her as she twisted her fingers up into his hair and planted an enormous kiss on his lips. Then she gasped and pushed herself back so she could examine him.

“I didn’t even think – you’re not hurt?”

Cullen smiled and shook his head. He reached out for Dorian who, calm as ever, sidled in close enough that Cullen could kiss him, too. Leaning across the gap between their horses was awkward and a bit of a stretch, and the kiss wasn’t enough – not ever enough – but it would do for now.

When Dorian pulled back, he was smiling. “You certainly didn’t waste any time getting back here, did you? Must have missed me.”

Cullen smiled, twined their fingers together. “Not my fault. Leliana all but kicked me out of my own camp.”

“Our spymaster is certainly a force to be reckoned with,” the Inquisitor said, kissing one eyelid, then the other, before settling herself more comfortably on his lap and snuggling in. “I’m glad you’re home, Cullen.”

“As am I. Welcome back, amatus.”

As always, Cullen felt his stomach flip at the way Dorian gave out his term of endearment – carefully, with intent, like something so rich it must be savoured and spent wisely. Like a promise. Like a gift bestowed. Dorian squeezed his hand, then let go and turned their horses for home. The Inquisitor stayed where she was, curled up in Cullen’s lap, and her hart turned and followed them as they made their way to the gate, to Skyhold, to home at last and at last, with the end of their long battle with Corypheus in sight.

 

* * *

 

Cooling off at last, he lifts his head at the sound of voices. The lights in Leliana’s tower have finally been extinguished, and by starlight he can’t make out the two figures who cross the short balustrade towards his tower, but he doesn’t need to. He knows their voices, would recognize the soft, sleepy murmur of the Inquisitor and the vibrant thrum of Dorian’s Tevinter accent even at the world’s ending, even half-dead. He knows their voices even through his nightmares.

“Cullen? Is that you?” The Inquisitor’s voice switches from sleepy to alert in an instant, ever the leader, ever ready to tend her flock. He is so proud that she has ended up here, that she stayed. He is so proud that she is here.

“I’m fine,” he calls to them, trying to sound steady. “I’ll be there in a…moment…” He is interrupted by the sound of the door being thrown open, rolls his eyes and gives up his protest as she rushes through the corner of his office that brings her to him, opens his arms so she can charge straight into them. “You worry too much,” he says, because it’s what he always says when she is scared for him. She makes a small, disgusted sound that reminds him very much of Cassandra.

“Really?” says Dorian, strolling up behind her as casual as ever. “I think we worry exactly the right amount.”

“It’s good to see you,” Cullen says quietly, and the Inquisitor’s arms tighten around him before she lets go.

“I’m sorry it’s so late,” she says. “Josephine is relentless. You should have gone to bed without us, Cullen.”

“When there’s work to be done? My dear Inquisitor, you wound me.”

“Well, I’m going.” Dorian yawns, rubs his arms against the cold. “That new one you have, Sutherland? He gave me more trouble than I let on. I’m going to have _bruises_.”

Cullen laughs, reaches out, and pulls both of them in. The Inquisitor plants a kiss on his cheek, then Dorian’s, then snuggles into the shelter the two of them provide. Cullen looks over to find Dorian watching him and can’t remember the last time he felt like this – like he’d come home after being gone for his entire life, like he’d made it, somehow, to safety. “Go get settled in,” he says. “I need another minute in the cold.”

Dorian’s lips quirk in concern. “Alright.” He leans in to touch their foreheads together, briefly, before dropping a kiss there and pulling away.

Cullen listens to them climb the ladder, get rid of their boots and whatever clothes are most uncomfortable, argue good-naturedly over one of the pillows, settle in on the creaking boards. He stands beneath the great black dome of the sky, stars crisp and bright in the unrelenting cold, watching his breath plume out to obscure them one slow exhale at a time. He takes a moment to pray, because it’s habit and because he wants to, thanking the Maker for the gift of love, for giving it so many forms, for finding him worthy of it after he failed to save the circles of Ferelden and Kirkwall. For letting him atone through the Inquisition. For helping him live through the breaking of his lyrium chains. He wants to pray his thanks for the Inquisitor and for Dorian, too, for their existence, for their presence in his life, but he can’t find the words. It doesn’t bother him too much. He thinks the Maker already knows.

When he climbs the ladder, the Inquisitor is already asleep. Dorian’s eyes shine golden in the subtle mage-light, and crinkle in a smile as Cullen climbs in beside him and rests his head over his heart.


End file.
